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Comment by theshrike79 | Hacker News Reader

18 hours is a practical level for smart watch battery. That way users will recharge it every night and never run out during the day.

24 hours means that people will sleep with it and forget to charge in the morning -> annoyed users.

36 hours would require charging every other night, but then you'd miss every other night's sleep tracking -> annoyed users.

There's really no way for Apple to win, unless they jump up to full 7 days or something.

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Honestly, all I want is something that I can put on charge once during the day, for 30 minutes while showering, and have it last until the following nights shower. I want it to track sleep, and monitor health. That's it at least. My Fitbit Versa works perfectly for this, and hey, it has a bonus that if I forget to charge it one night or over a weekend, it still lasts! No interrupted heartrate monitoring or sleep tracking.

I was really hoping Apple would step up their Apple Watch game this year, with a longer battery and native sleep tracking -- that's all I want. Personally, I don't really care about being able to answer calls from a watch when I have my phone on me 24/7. Time to wait another year I guess and keep using my Versa :-)

That's what I used to do with my Pebbles. I recently tried an Android Wear watch (TicWatch C2) for a few months, and it failed to live up to my expectations for battery life. I'm now using a Fitbit Ionic, and it fits the bill quite nicely.

I do this with my Apple Watch S3 and it works just fine. Maybe a bit more than 30 minutes in the morning? I don’t keep track. I leave it off for shower and breakfast.

Granted, there’s no native sleep tracking (yet?) but there are some 3rd party apps.

I know this is a completely different class of device, but even though my FitBit can last a few days without recharge, the more important thing is that it can get a full day's charge while I'm in the shower.

A 24 or 36 hr battery that recharges during a 15m shower I imagine would work for most people.

There are a lot of people who sleep with Apple watches already, since there are a handful of 3rd party sleep tracking apps. Plus, the silent alarm that taps on your wrist is really nice. You don't need to charge it for that long, 15-20 minutes before bed and in the morning is plenty.

Does the Apple Watch do native sleep tracking or do you need a 3rd-party app?

You need a 3rd party app. I use SleepWatch, Sleep++ and AutoSleep. Since they all use the HealthKit you can use multiple apps for different visualizations.

oura ring fills this use case.

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