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Comment by tw04 | Hacker News Reader

So on paper it sounds great, in practice this feature seems almost useless to me. As someone living in the garmin watch ecosystem, every time a new apple watch comes out, I quickly hit the specs page to see if they have made any progress at all on reasonable battery life and am continually let down.

With 36 hours being the absolute best-case scenario for battery life, it would seem your options are to either have two watches, or be perfectly fine only wearing your watch every other day? Otherwise, when do you charge?

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I’m on Garmin watches as well but this line of thinking is getting old. Partner has an Apple Watch and they charge it while in the shower/getting dressed and occasionally 10-15 minutes in the evening to make sure it gets through the night. Charger is in a convenient location and it’s dead easy to drop the watch on it. If you’re running ultras, then by all means stay on Garmin. But honestly for the day to day I’ve rarely seen it be an issue.

ETA: there’s plenty of valid reasons to prefer other watches (ANT+ compatibility being one of mine) but honestly the battery life thing is really not that bad for most users.

The battery life is what got me off. I don't have good charging habits, and nothing was worse than not being able to use your activity tracker for your workout because you forgot to charge it. I got a Garmin and I hardly ever have to think about it now.

Having to plan your day around when to charge your Apple Watch doesn't sound like a good experience to me.

Same ish pattern for me on my Pixel Watch (2 mabye?) unless I forget there's plenty of time to keep it topped up for a day and change of use with just a quick charge in the mornings. There's plenty of time I don't need a watch on to give it a quick top up.

> With 36 hours being the absolute best-case scenario for battery life, it would seem your options are to either have two watches, or be perfectly fine only wearing your watch every other day?

That only makes sense if you think it takes 12+ hours to charge. 20 minutes on the charger in the morning while I'm taking a shower and getting dressed and it's fine for the next 24 hours. Oh no, I can't wear it in the shower. I wasn't going to anyways.

You're going to miss out when Apple expands the hand-washing nag to hair washing.

"'Wash. Rinse. Repeat.' You didn't repeat."

- This was just a quick rinse

- I already repeated

At the risk of sounding like a shill, you can get by on the Apple Watch ecosystem’s battery life. The charge time is really quick, so throwing it on the charger while showering each day is sufficient.

Your point that a 36 hour battery life on a watch is pretty inconvenient stands. I have an Ultra 2 almost entirely because it can be described as an Apple Watch with a slightly more reasonable battery life. That’s a price I don’t expect most folks to pay.

The 36 hour battery life also isn't a best-case scenario. According to apple.com

"All-day battery life is based on the following use: 90 time checks, 90 notifications, 45 minutes of app use, and a 60-minute workout with music playback from Apple Watch via Bluetooth, over the course of 18 hours;"

This is the approach I take and it works well enough to let me wear it while sleeping. With a USB-C charger (faster) and not putting it back on until I'm all done getting ready, I rarely have to charge outside of showering.

How is 36 hours different from 3600 hours, in your scenario? Either way, you need either need two watches, or not wear it sometimes.

The answer is, of course, that sometimes you don't wear it, but charge it. Like a few minutes in the morning and/or a few minutes in the evening while you shower or eat or whatever. Done.

The difference is that you don't need to do it every day. On the one hand, it's pretty easy to "multitask", like charging while while brushing/flossing, shaving, etc. But it's certainly much easier to not have to think about charging it at all in the evening basically ever, which is the joy that Garmin users have.

I currently have an Epix Pro and I use it to track a 45-90min workout about 6 days a week. I also have it set to "most accurate" (GPS + Galileo + GNSS) positioning and to sample blood oxygen all day rather than just at night, so it's getting quite a battery workout for a non-ultra-endurance-athlete user. When I opened this thread I decided it was a good time to charge it, since I'm in a work call anyway, and it was only at 53% after about a week since the last charge. I'll have it plugged in for 20-3min and it'll probably be around 90% when I put it back on after the meeting, and I'll find some other convenient time next week... but not until next week.

See you say that but I know if I had 5-day battery I'll keep forgetting about it. Happens with my airpods all the time.

But Apple Watch is part of my routine, same as with the iPhone.

> in practice this feature seems almost useless to me

Maybe to you, assuming you don't have sleep apnea.

Far too many people have it and it goes undiagnosed. Until that person goes on to have a stroke, heart attack or sleeps at the wheel.

It's a silent killer and I suspect we have an epidemic.

You’re missing the point. It’s not useless as a feature in a vacuum. It seems useless on a device that needs to be charged every night to be used during the day. I’m extremely skeptical of the folks saying they only need to charge for 20 minutes to get by for 24 hours when the specs say other wise and friends that have Apple Watches say otherwise as well.

My Series 6 Apple Watch lasts from about 8am to midnight every day. If I wanted to sleep while wearing it I'd just take it off around 11pm and it'd be done charging almost every time by midnight, sometimes even sooner.

I used to religiously wear Pebble watches because they lasted forever between charges. But in all honesty I just don't find the one day battery life of AW to be that bad considering how quickly they charge. IMO they do have all-day battery.

Don't get me wrong, a better battery would be great. But the only time I ever run into issues with my apple watch dying is when I am traveling and my routine is messed up anyways.

Otherwise I am just in the habit of waking up, sticking it on the charger, getting ready for my day and putting it back on. Doesn't take long to get to a full charge.

I get access to all of the features and just loose it for 30 minutes to an hour.

You're not supposed to wear it while you shower (soap is generally bad for any waterproof seals...). Just slap it on the charger while you shower. Or slap it on the charger when you wake up, during your usual morning routine. It's a bit of a change of paradigm from the 'charge while you sleep' that we do with phones, but you get used to it.

So you’re telling me a 20 minute charge is going to get you through 24 hours with a workout every day? That just seems unlikely to me based on everything I’ve read.

If you’re working out every single day, probably not. But it should absolutely be plenty to get you through a day and then you can top it off for another 10-15 mins before bed. It’ll even give you an alert informing you it needs charging to make it through the night at the appropriate time before your configured “wind down” period so you can charge right before bed.

Lower states of charge will charge faster, so 2 smaller charging sessions would result in less total time spent charging, actually.

When I come home from my morning walk, I'm usually a bit hot and sweaty, and it feels good to sit down and take the watch off and throw it on the charger. 10-30 minutes is enough for it to charge; I wish it would ding when full.

If it lasted 36 hours that would be enough for me to sleep with it.

your phone should get a notification when its full!

It does - but by then I'm working and don't look at it, and forget until I stand up a few hours later.

How does this relate to sleep apnea detection?

I agree the battery life is shit compared to Garmin, but then you need to compare features and usability too. And as a long-time Garmin owner I am 100% certain that is not a fair comparison either.

>How does this relate to sleep apnea detection?

Because every friend I've talked to about the apple watch tells me charging isn't a big deal because they just throw it on the charger at night with their phone and use it in the morning. If I'm wearing it all night to track sleep apnea, when do I charge it? Per my original post. It looks like it takes an hour and a half to do a full charge, so it's not like you can just throw it on the charger for 15 minutes in the morning while getting ready for work.

There are already numerous people in this thread saying that they charge it while showering in the morning and that is enough.

Everyone sets their own routine. I charge it every morning when I start working. Takes about an hour.

It is manageable, but really sucks.

It is a bummer not to have Garmin like battery life, but it takes like 15 minutes to charge so you just sit it on the charger while Itake a shower or something or while im working and other than that I can wear it all the time. Battery life is mostly an issue if trying to do a long hike, need a garmin for that.

It takes like 20 minutes to charge the watch. Just don’t wear it for that time

The manual says 45 minutes to 80%, 90 minutes to 100%. If I'm only charging to 80% that's roughly 14 hours of battery life on a Series 9 or 10 (18 hours on full charge). So not even a full day? I just don't get how the math works if I'm trying to wear it all night every night and wear it for workouts during the day.

There is a material difference between the older Apple Watch (where the charging puck uses USB A) and the newer Apple Watch and/or the Ultra (where the charging puck uses USB C). Plugged into an appropriate source, the USB C puck gets much faster charging and is usually sufficient for a day's wear after about 10 minutes (depending, of course, on what the day includes).

Charging to 80% is likely to be more than enough for most uses, and topping it up with another 15% just before bed is enough for overnight (probably).

I had the Series 4 previously and the Ultra 2 now; with the older watch, I would charge it for about an hour while watching TV in the evening. With the Ultra 2, I charge it for about 20 minutes here and there depending on what I’m doing and whether I remember. I’m currently at 39% which will be just fine for my hourlong exercise ride (with GPS), and then I can toss it on the charger while I shower and it’ll probably be at 70% which is good enough for another full day.

I charge it when I shower.

I charge when I’m in the shower each day and this works fine for me.

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