Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

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I think all day depends on the specific device. For example, I would accept a 10 hr battery life for a laptop or wireless headphones as "all-day" because that will cover a full work day and people aren't expected to use those devices 24/7. 18 hours for "all-day" on a wearable seems reasonable if the expectation is that it will be used only when the user is awake. A complicating factor is that Watch OS 6 is supposed to include sleep tracking. Making that functionality native would seem to recommend wearing the watch 24/7 in a way that wasn't encouraged when that was handled by 3rd party apps. In my opinion, that changes the definition of "all-day" for this device.

EDIT: I am just catching up on all the announcements, while it was expected in the lead up to today[1] there was no talk of native sleep tracking during the event. I wonder if it will be rolled out quietly so Apple could have plausible deniability on 24/7 usage being "recommended" or if they decided to completely scrap it due to battery performance issues.

[1] - https://9to5mac.com/2019/09/02/apple-watch-sleep-tracking-re...

> Making that functionality native would seem to recommend wearing the watch 24/7

Exactly! At this point, my expectation is that I would wear the watch at all times except when I shower in the morning, and that is when I would charge it. But it won't charge that quickly. :(

Which means I either have to give up sleep tracking or activity tracking to charge it.

It sounds like they need to make it so that the bands can store energy so that I can charge one band and wear one band and then switch them each day.

> But it won't charge that quickly. :(

Long time Apple Watch owner, currently using the Series 4 - charging while in the shower is exactly how I charge my watch. It has never run out using this way.

I read this comment 10 minutes ago and until it clicked for me just now I assumed you had some kind of weird in-shower charging device.

Or just really, really long showers.

Some people are in and out of the shower in less than 5 minutes, others 60 minutes.

Shower takes 5m, shaving in shower +3m, dressing an additional 5m. Add in breakfast and/or coffee and you’re looking at close to 30m - grab watch on the way out - my series4 is usually fully charged.

Quite a lot happening in the morning, before you go out. Those are many steps which are not reported on the daily summary.

I guess I am always rushed, What you described as 30m schedule takes me less than 10.

Same here. I sleep with the watch on and charge it while I shower/get dressed. I usually get a full charge during that time and, most times, the watch lasts way more than 18 hours.

I also charge it while doing my morning routine, though that includes making lunches, some coffee, showering, etc. It can easily last through to the next morning, though occasionally I charge for a bit in the evening just to make the number look better.

I imagine as the battery fades this might be less workable though.

Nah, it's fine. I charge my Apple Watch for 15m before bed (to make sure it'll last the night) and while I get ready in the morning, and that's all it needs to stay on my wrist literally the rest of my life without ever coming close to running out of power.

It appears you are not a G-Shock wearer (need to remove for shower?? ha!)

FWIW, I’ve been using an Apple Watch for a few years now including nights. I just charge it while I shower/get ready/prepare breakfast (~45 min) which seems to be enough to last till the next morning. Not sure what the battery life on the new ones will be though.

While sleep tracking is possible the single most useful thing I could get out of a wearable, I just have never been able to sleep with a watch or band on. Until there's something as low profile as a reminder band (think Livestrong), I'm not sure if I'll be able to get sleep tracking (the Oura ring is promising, but the price point is too high for its limited applications to me).

Interesting, I don't mind sleeping with a watch band on and there are a few 3rd party sleep tracking apps for the apple watch already that are decent.

My biggest complaint is there's no way to disable the screen that's good enough for sleeping. In theater mode it still wakes up if you tap the glass and I accidentally bump it way too often when lying in bed. I really want a better night time mode where only pressing the crown will light up the screen. If they do add an officially supported sleep tracker I hope they'd run into this issue and fix it.

Oura ring is a wonderful sleep tracker. While certainly a tad pricey, its incredibly effective at its given purpose. I didn't realize 1) how much quality sleep impacted my overall health and 2) how consistently quantifying sleep quality impacts daily decisions (working out, drinking, eating, etc). Highly recommended.

I don't mean to be sarcastic - but how is sleep tracking useful? What practical benefit do you get out of knowing how long/how you sleep?

When you wake up exhausted (or not) you can see what/when contributed to that.

I used such for a couple years. Best part was specifying what time range I wanted to wake up, and it would watch for the best actual time to wake me. Much happier mornings then.

This is what I miss too. Sleep Cycle alarm clock used to do that for me but it stopped working a little while ago and I can't figure out why.

I gave my old watch to my girlfriend and having her use it for sleep tracking has been super helpful in tackling her sleep issues. Once she saw her numbers for deep sleep every night, it kind of kicked her into action to address the root cause. Sometimes just quantifying something is really helpful. It's also been somewhat useful in comparing the various approaches (prescriptions, marijuana, vitamins, exercise, etc etc), because sometimes it's hard to judge how good of sleep you got one night if you're constantly getting terrible sleep every other night.

There is few literature on the effect of marijuana on sleep. It mostly looks like it decrease your REM sleep while increasing your deep sleep when you take any of it (the process inverse when you stop). Actually, any open data or even feedback would be of help.

There is a business school cliche: what gets measured gets managed

For me, it helps figure out if my sleep apnea is getting worse and I need to talk to somebody about my CPAP machine or not.

I use a Beddit for this very reason - https://www.beddit.com

I didn't realize Beddit kept going after they were acquired by Apple. I had the first couple versions as review units but I ended up just stopping using them because they didn't tell me anything I basically didn't already know. Which is sort of how I feel about sleep tracking generally. I didn't get enough sleep last night? You don't say.

(I do think they're potentially useful for someone who feels tired a lot and doesn't understand why. I'm less convinced by the value of ongoing tracking.)

The Beddit devices I tried ended up breaking due to either wireless communication issues or sensor damage. I gave up on it. I’m thinking if I end up with a spare Apple Watch for whatever reason that I’d use the old spare while sleeping.

There is also the Withings device https://www.withings.com/us/en/sleep which I use and works well.

Beddit is $149. Expensive. Why not Fitbit Inspire which starts from $69 and includes sleep tracking and a lot more.

I don’t see an option I don’t need to wear, unless I’m looking at the wrong thing.

I have the same issue as the original poster in that I find wearing something on my wrist while I sleep uncomfortable. The Beddit is a strip that goes under my sheets. So I guess that’s why not.

GP specifically said they have trouble sleeping with most wearables.

Have you looked at the Xiaomi Mi Bands? They do sleep tracking, are fairly low profile and easy to find on Amazon for under $30. I switched my mom over from a buggy Fitbit to one last year and it's been better in every way. Given the cost of most of its competitors, it kinda boggles my mind that I don't see more of them.

I don't like the privacy policy of the Xiaomi Mi Bands. But what I found out, is that there's an excellent firewall on Android called NetGuard, and it can block network traffic on a per-app basis. So I just block the Mi Fit app, and it doesn't seem to influence anything.

The killer feature of Mi Bands is battery life. 25 days easily. And price. Quite amazing value for the price.

I've had the Amazfit Bip (a Xiaomi brand) watch for maybe a year and it's still doing around 40 days per charge with an always-on transflective screen, without notifications.

For Android, Sleep as Android has a contactless option (they emit ultrasonic audio and then sense the changes in the audio field): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid...

I've also found it uncomfortable to sleep with an Apple Watch on.

I started using a Whoop band a couple of months ago for mostly that purpose and I often forget that I'm wearing it.

I find that placing my device on my ankle is significantly more comfortable for night-time tracking.

The band I have is of a suitable length for both wrist and ankle use.

I have a Watch 4, and contrary to how battery expectations usually go, the life on it is actually really solid. I’ve gotten close to 2 days on it before. I often wear it overnight, then put it on charge when I first wake up, it’s usually close/if not fully charge by the time I head to work.

I don’t have hard stats to back this up, but with the new watchOS 6 it recently improved quite a bit for me, also on Watch Series 4. It’s particularly improved with workouts, though I would still love to have a feature that can “Undo” pausing a workout or vice versa, undo a workout that ran 20 hours longer than it was supposed to. Don’t get me wrong, great watch, great improvements, just... not perfect. Also, being able to track my activity between sleeping periods instead of only midnight to midnight would also be nice to have.

Same here with my Series 4 Apple Watch. I can push close to 2 days between charges, which I think is great. It was frustrating having to charge my Series 1 watch at odd times every day.

Given that sleep tracking is one of the prime uses of my Apple Watch, I prefer to have it on my wrist all night, and charge during the late mornings usually, at me desk when I am in the middle of a block of coding.

I personally think the sleep tracking is being held back while they validate it. They’re going to look to categorize your sleep phases, and will probably try to get FDA certification of some sort. The play is to make the watch a diagnostic device, cover a lot of the basics for healthcare providers. My guess is that sleep tracking lands next year.

>because that will cover a full work day and people aren't expected to use those devices 24/7

Just expand that for a bit.

For people doing Coding, that might have meant every second of it, for normal people on a computer, There will be likely be 20%- 50% of times you idling ( in computer terms ) or doing something else.

So it is not just 24/7, you just aren't really using the computer for every minutes every seconds.

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