"all-day battery life"
Ugh, Apple really has lowered expectations. In order to switch from my Garmin, I'd want at least a week.. Even my MS Band from 10 years ago had 48hrs of battery life.
Ugh, Apple really has lowered expectations. In order to switch from my Garmin, I'd want at least a week.. Even my MS Band from 10 years ago had 48hrs of battery life.
But I agree there is a huge difference between once-daily charging and once-weekly charging.
I will say it wasn't great when I had the non-Ultra. It was fine at first, the watch would last a full day, but like 2 or 3 years later it would struggle if I did a lot of exercise in a day to make it to the time I go to bed.
I also recently went on a 5-day backpacking trip and it was a struggle to keep my phone and watch charged with an external battery. If the ultra lasted even 3 days instead of just 2ish on a charge this would have made it way easier. By the end of the trip to save charge I just gave up charging the watch.
You can't just throw it on the charger for a few minutes before bed and awhile during shower in the morning?
That is a big deal to me personally, that's an extra routine I have to incorporate into my day that given the option I'd rather not.
There's a setting under Notifications & Alerts > Smart notifications > Status (switch to off). In the Garmin app
I'm sure you get used to it and it becomes part of a routine but it's nice not having to deal with it daily.
I'm not that deep into the fitness scene, but I'm convinced by the 14-day battery life. But I also understand if you find the look a bit unfashionable.
A common complaint I hear is "yeah but there's no apps! how do I add extra functionality to my watch?" .. they just don't believe you when you say "it's already there"
Smart watches are general purpose devices, more sandboxes than anything else.. where as Fitness/Sports Watches (Garmin/Coros/Suunto/etc) already have everything you need for Fitness/Sports, and things you didn't know existed. What's happened is that it's trivially easy for Fitness watches to add some smart offerings (Calls/Texts/Notifications) and also some apps...then it is for Apple/Google/Samsung to add fitness things.
Sure Apple and also Google did add in some training load/status/etc stuff.. which is great cool... but it's also still a device that I have to charge daily, instead of monthly. And then, when theres a fitness metric or long term stat I want to see, i have to give some third party developer my health data to do it.
An example of that last thing. I have a friend who's a triathlete, I'm going to travel to run a Half Marathon with him, he uses an Apple Watch SE, I'm on a Garmin Fenix 7x.
He's jealous of all the long term stats I have, like all the training load over time, adaptive workouts, etc etc. He's on that cusp of ditching a smart watch and getting a dedicated fitness watch. When I see him, and he sees what I can do on my watch.. he's gonna love it.
I've got one for my smoker, a fireboard app. Useful to see the temp on my wrist when I've got a brisket finishing
All the smart features i want on a watch is, Notifications, to know when someone is calling me, payments, and to find my phone.
Everything else is something I do on my phone.
>Plus, a new better Battery Saver Mode extends battery life to up to 36 hours across both sizes, without compromising any of your health and fitness tracking or safety features.
I don't know if 48 hr battery is that much better. Charging it everyday is easier than remembering every other day. You basically have to jump from 24hr to a week battery for people to truly care.
I pointed out the 48hr life because I loved the MS Band, and I can't think of anything it didn't do that any modern smart watch does for me that I actually care about. And it got the same or better battery life as is typical in the market today. And on much worse hardware.
I went even further and got a Garmin Instinct 2X Solar with a battery life of a month.
I didn't understand how annoying it was to always charge the watch/Oura ring/Whoop band/phone until I got rid of them (except for the phone, that's still annoying).
I'm much happier with a watch that does fewer things but does them well. Only having to charge it for ~30 minutes once every few weeks means that I can just leave it on all the time like the non-smart watches I used to wear.
I don't think I'd want the extra battery life unless it was much longer. Like a month or more. Remembering to charge a device just once a week is harder to make a habit out of than just putting the device on the inductive charger every time I take a shower.
Still enjoying my glorified fitness band watch with 2-3 week battery life.
Apple Watches are more like mini-iPhones. For example, I can take calls from my watch without a phone nearby, which is more appealing to me than multi-day battery life.
Look, I’m not claiming it’s life changing. The way I describe the Apple Watch to people is that you can definitely live your life without it but the little conveniences add up.
It’s silly that I’m getting downvoted because it’s true. The Apple Watch and some android watches are more powerful devices more akin to a mini-phone. And because they’re more powerful they use more power. Do people really think Apple is purposefully gimping their own device or maybe there’s more too it than “these are all smart watches”.
I’m totally ok with charging my watch every night and the extra little conveniences I get from a more powerful device are worth it to me.
For a Garmin-style watch, the convenience of only needing a ~30min charge once or twice a month is pretty big.
If that matters to you then great but I take issue with putting all of these watches in the same bucket and pretending that they’re all the same except for battery life. It’s just not true.
I had an Android Wear watch years ago (2016?) that started with 36hr battery life and did great sleep tracking and fitness tracking. Between updates and battery degradation, after a year or so, it would barely make it 18 hours. Then I had to start charging overnight so it would be charged enough for my 5am runs, and so I lost the sleep tracking feature.
I like that my watch serves as a mini-iPhone, and I don’t mind charging it while I sleep. I like that I can install some of the same apps on my phone and watch.
What is weird is saying an Apple Watch is inferior to a 10 year old watch because of the battery life, when these are different devices with different purposes.
Think about this for a second, would Apple purposefully gimp their watch’s battery life or maybe, just maybe, there’s more going on.
Yes?
Design a device with just enough to get through the day, forces getting replaced in a few years when battery degrades. Apple is a hardware company with the capability to optimize battery life but they don't since 80% health on a batt that lasts a week won't force a replacement for most customers.
My other apple devices are the same way. I switched to iPhone 10 years ago they’ve held up very well.
Your statement is ignorant.
Citation? In my experience this isn't the case. 2-3 years heavy use and the batt needs replacement (less than 80% design capacity). Can sometimes get as high as 5 years on a lightly used device. It may work longer but its not going to hold anywhere near design capacity. The dual-cell low voltage charging standards other manufacturers use seem to hold up longer since the heat is reduced.
> I switched to iPhone 10 years ago they’ve held up very well.
Cool, stuff like my original SE's hold up fine (and got a security update like a week ago). I've just replaced the batteries 2 or 3 times because they age and performance declines. This is expected but I'm not going to cope on a battery with 60% of its design capacity and act like its just as good as new.
> Your statement is ignorant.
I forgot how hard some people will try to rationalize their behavior. I still think the statement holds true knowing how many people I've met clinging to devices with dying batteries and saying 'well I have an upgrade coming soon' rather than just replacing the fucking battery.
It's the same thing. I'm not going to wear two watches, a choice has to be made. Based on criteria important to me (and to the original commenter you jumped on) Apple Watch is clearly inferior.
I changed to a Garmin this year (started to do ultra marathons) and I've run out a couple of times because I just don't remember to charge. Especially when using GPS and bluetooth audio with it massively bumps up power consumption (which felt less like the case on the Apple Watch)
Still prefer the Garmin, but just saying that I don't think battery life is the huge feature that people think it is.