9to5mac:
Apple initially wanted the Apple Watch battery to provide roughly one full day of usage, mixing a comparatively small amount of active use with a larger amount of passive use. As of 2014, Apple wanted the Watch to provide roughly 2.5 to 4 hours of active application use versus 19 hours of combined active/passive use, 3 days of pure standby time, or 4 days if left in a sleeping mode. Sources, however, say that Apple will only likely achieve approximately 2-3 days in either the standby or low-power modes.
Apple has also been stress-testing the Apple Watch’s battery life with pre-bundled and third-party applications. Our sources say that Apple is targeting 2.5 hours of “heavy” application use, such as processor-intensive gameplay, or 3.5 hours of standard app use. Interestingly, Apple expects to see better battery life when using the Watch’s fitness tracking software, which is targeted for nearly 4 hours of straight exercise tracking on a single charge.
The early adopters will live with any battery life constraints and, ultimately, the power problem will get better over time as Apple R&D finds ways to shave power usage, create more efficient components, and battery technology becomes more efficient.
This will be real problem for all the people who stare at their watch five hours a day.
I might still be interested in this watch based on this battery life, but now I want to know what health (if any) tracking it does in “passive” mode.
I wonder if battery life really will improve in the future, or if it’ll be more like iPhone, where battery life is roughly constant year to year, because power savings/battery technology improvements are used to deliver increased performance.
Except they don’t. As Apple improves the power efficiency of their devices over time, those devices get thinner and lighter and consequently, so do the batteries, so the battery life remains about the same.
All of it. The point of the tracking activity is to monitor you standing, walking, and active movement during the day. That feature would be useless if it required you to turn it on.
Battery life includes that definition. Battery tech hasn’t changed in any of these devices. Battery life is improved by increasing capacity and decreasing usage.
Take a look at the original iPhone battery life spec and see where you’re wrong.
The rumour distinguishes exercise use from passive use. I’m not sure what the difference is. One of the things I want from my future Apple Watch is for it to tell me how many times I stood up in the course of the day. (Walking and activity, too, of course… but I do think I need to work on not sitting so long!)
If that is not part of what it can do all day, the first generation product probably isn’t for me. But it’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t be. 🙂