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Comment by ngai_aku | Hacker News Reader

When will we get a watch that can be fully de-coupled from your phone? I’d love to make that trade right now.

There would need to be an incredible breakthrough in battery technology. Cellular radios just take up too much power for it to be a reasonable experience right now, unless you want to change watches mid-day.

There's no breakthrough necessary. The batteries are already good enough to manage standby with an occasional call, which meets the _phone_ needs of most users. The Apple Watch today is at least as good as a phone today as the iPhone was a decade ago. I can't even imagine the complexities of carrier/Apple politics to know what the real reasons are for why Apple hasn't allowed the watch to be standalone, but they aren't technical.

Which Apple Watch are you using? Because I can't make it a full day cellular only. It will die. I've tried. I have the series 6 with latest WatchOS.

SE. How long is a day for you and what are you doing on it? Mine lasts at least 8 hours with light use (mostly standby with an hour of music but no streaming) before I decide to charge it around 50%, which is about what I'd expect of my phone 5 years ago.

Are you using cellular exclusively during those 8 hours? "Apple Watch Series 6 (GPS + Cellular) usage includes a total of 4 hours of LTE connection" according to Apple. (https://www.apple.com/watch/battery/).

My LTE only usage includes about 30 minutes of streaming and the rest just glancing. I can't get through a day like this.

I think this will be the next big gadget. It makes no sense that I need an iphone to couple with the watch if a PC/Mac could do the same. It's just apple trying to sell more iphones.

Also, audio-first apps for watches will be huge, and already a great niche to experiment with (although ability to code apps is still limited)

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