[Bug] High Battery Usage Due to Frequent WakeLocks in Wear OS Complications

[TebbeUbben]

I have noticed that using AndroidAPS complications on my Wear OS watch significantly increases battery consumption - reducing battery life by several hours. Upon analyzing battery logs, I found that AndroidAPS acquires a WakeLock every 15 seconds, which prevents the device from entering a more power-efficient sleep mode.

The issue originates from this line in BaseComplicationProviderService. The intention behind this logic is to ensure complications update correctly when displaying the time elapsed since the last CGM reading. However, this approach keeps the CPU awake unnecessarily, leading to excessive power drain.

A more battery-efficient way to achieve the same behavior is to use ComplicationText.TimeDifferenceBuilder. This allows the system to intelligently update the complication only when needed, reducing unnecessary wake-ups and code executions and allowing the watch to stay in a low-power state when not in use.

I’ve implemented this approach for the LongStatusComplication, and it has worked well in my testing. My changes can be found in the wear-complications-timedifference branch.

Additionally, newer Wear OS versions and Jetpack libraries introduce dynamic expressions, which provide even more flexibility for complication updates while optimizing battery usage.

[MilosKozak]

@Philoul

[SimonPhilpott]

I'm sure this is causing the same issue for me too. Not on my watch but on my phone, I have an issue raised and noticed the excessive wakelocks too.

#3819