long rides and strava, apple watch

[lmgoldberg]

I have been tracking my rides on strava but noticed for long rides (more than 80 miles), my phone and apple watch run out of juice before the end.
When the phone battery gets very low, I can always plug it into an external source. The external batteries are pretty light so that is not a big deal. But there isn't a good solution for the watch. I already use the watch to track other exercise so it would be nice to be able to keep all my workouts in one place. It is also just easier to get to than my phone. Others have this problem? Any solutions? Thanks.

[FFX_Hinterlands]

You can see if you can reduce triggering of the display on the watch. They now have little key-fob looking portable chargers for the watch. They have a built in battery. You'd need to stop and take off your watch and charge it for a bit, though.
Here's an example of one.

[lmgoldberg]

agreed not really a solution mid-ride, but very interesting, thanks.

[FFX_Hinterlands]

When you use an Apple Watch with a paired phone, Strava should use the phone for GPS and the watch just for display. It seems like it your watch battery shouldn't get that depleted since the GPS ping drains the battery. Perhaps give feedback to Strava and maybe they can come up with a "low power mode" feature to limit watch involvement. Another idea would be to put your watch in airplane mode during part of the ride and see if Strava can handle that. They might have some of their own advice, I suppose.

[Brandon]

This is a little interesting, I used strava on my apple watch for my commute. I also play music from my phone on one wireless earbud. I can do my 40 mile RT commute (2.5 hours) along with standard watch use during the day, and still have ~60% battery left by the time I get home. That said, I did notice that if I played music from the watch or used my podcast player, it drained my watch battery VERY quickly. So based on experience, the issue might not be with strava, but another watch app you are using. Try playing music from the phone and not the watch. The watch should still let you control the phone and music playing, but it's not using the watch music app itself.

[Judd]

Another possible consideration is the age of the batteries in the phone and the watch. I usually get about 18 months from an iphone battery before it starts draining quickly. They're fairly easy to replace with kits from Amazon.