Samsung Gear S3 is a Tizen-based military-grade smartwatch which was released sometime last year while the Gear Sport was only released some months ago at Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) 2017 held in Berlin. The Gear Sport became the first wearable to sport the Tizen 3.0 OS. Today, the Gear S3 got a major update which bumps the software on the watch to Tizen 3.0 and brings it on par with the Gear Sport. These smartwatches are packed with numerous features like heart rate monitoring and other apps which runs automatically and rapidly drains the battery thus making it difficult to use this smartwatch as a regular watch. Nevertheless, Tizen 3.0 comes with a special feature dubbed “Watch Only”. This feature disables all functionalities and in this mode, all the watch does is to show you the time and nothing else. Interestingly, this mode can extend the Gear S3 battery life by 40 days.
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As interesting as this sounds, it is not without issues. When the “watch only” mode is activated, you can not continuously see the time. Whenever the screen goes blank, you will have to press the power button to see the time. “Watch Only” mode surpasses every other option including “watch always-on” thus you still have to press the power button. Although this feature is great and saves your battery, it does not entirely convert the smartwatch into a regular watch.
The Gear S3 and Gear Sport come with a 380 mAh and 300 mAh respectively and naturally, none of these devices would be able to go for 40 days, not with the features they pack. Many thanks to “Watch Only” mode, this is now possible. Samsung only has to work on the time display so that it can permanently show the time in watch mode. If this happens then we can then say that the “watch only” mode truly turns the smartwatch into a regular watch.
To activate “watch only” mode, go to “settings”, enter “battery management” and click on “watch only” option. To get back to regular functionality, press the power button for 3 seconds.