Samsung Watch 5 battery life

John, the 40mm version of the regular Galaxy Watch 5 model comes with a 284mAh battery, whereas the 44mm model has a bigger 410mAh unit. The Galaxy Watch 5 Pro model, on the other hand, packs an even bigger 590mAh unit. If you have the 40mm version, then all I can say is I'm sorry that you didn't do more research before buying that model. I'm assuming that you don't have the "Watch5 Pro" model, because that's what I'm using, and I have no battery drain issues whatsoever. That said, here are some suggestions... (1) consider using connected mode and carry the smartphone in your pocket while you play. I do this because, although most of the time, I only check my watch for yardage info, there are times when I want to check the full overhead satellite view on my phone, in order to check distances and shot alignment on blind shots. If you do continue using standalone mode, I suggest that you adjust your Watch5 Display settings - I happen to like to turn my 'Brightness' up to 100% to make it as easy as possible to read in bright sunlight. But if you're having battery drain issues, you should lower the brightness as much as you can. I wouldn't use "Adaptive Brightness", as that is likely to increase display brightness automatically... I'd rather control that manually and cup my other hand around the watch if it's harder to see in bright sunlight. Also, turn off "Always On Display", and turn on "Raise wrist to wake" and/or "Touch screen to wake"... this way, your watch display will dim completely when you're not looking at it, and turn on only when you lift your arm and turn your watch so it faces upwards (or tap your watchface). Also check your "screen timeout setting". I have mine set to 30 seconds. You might want to set yours to the minimum 15 seconds... the "1-minute setting" is definately too long if you're having battery issues. I don't do this, but you might also want to experiment with the "Do Not Disturb" setting. I believe that this is related to sleep mode, when you would be wearing the watch to detect physical changes while you sleep, but wouldn't want the watch to signal you when the phone receives a notification, text message, or incoming call. That's all that I can think of... just don't turn on "Power-Saving Mode", as that would disable all functions on the watch other than displaying the correct time of day. Hope this helps...

I've only recently got both the watch and the app, but I am noticing even when I haven't used the app, and it's not showing in the list of running apps on the watch, it's always the top app for battery usage. Not sure if that's normal ? Seems a bit odd to me 

I'm not sure I understand, how does closing the screen on your phone help with the watch battery life?

I've had the same issue. What I usually do is to close the screen on my phone instead of letting it run constantly in the background and that saves a lot of battery.