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Comment by Reason077 | Hacker News Reader

> "30 day battery life"

I've done the math and according to my calculations that's approximately 30X more battery life than an Apple Watch. Impressive!

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About 60 for me. I have to charge mine while working to get it to last a day :/

I have had an Apple Watch since the original and never had it that bad. I think something is wrong with your watch.

That's common for me after three or four years.

I charged my S6 last night - it’s been running 22 hours - and it has 17% charge left. That’s at about 4.5 years old.

I don’t run it at high screen brightness though.

disable hours-in-sunlight, it's a battery gobbler.

Switch to a MIPS transflective or e-paper display as on a Pebble or Garmin, OLED and LCD displays on Apple and Samsung watches look pretty indoors (when they're not turned off to save power) but are hard to read outside (without excessive brightness) and are battery gobblers.

Just charged my Garmin Fenix for the first time in... 9 days (it was down at 18%, could get a few more days but it makes me nervous), most of the battery use went to some 11 hours of GPS activity recording and heart rate recording. Could get 30 days if I turned off the features the Pebble doesn't have.

Even Garmin has largely moved to AMOLED screens. They look great both indoors and outside and with modern technology they are not as battery hungry as they once were. Personally I find the battery life on my Apple Watch more than acceptable. I charge it while I’m showering and getting readying in the morning and have never had any issues even though I am a very heavy watch user and often use it independently of my phone.

I used to have a Pebble Time and agreed the battery life with those displays is nice, but honestly it doesn't bother me to put it on the charger every evening.

The only real benefit a longer battery life would have is not needing to bring a special charger if I go out of town for a few days, but I solved that years ago using a power bank that has qi and watch charging pads on it as my travel charger.

If anything, I'd switch back to a Pebble or similar because the Apple Watch does too much and I don't want that much gizmo on my person all the time. But the Pebble reboot products don't do it for me design-wise.

Just a tip with Apple watches: get the battery service at least once during the lifespan of your watch. It's $99 and Apple gives you a brand new watch.

With that battery service the watch should last you about 6-10 years judging by the current status of my Series 4.

Yes, a watch should be able to last a lot longer than that, but I think if you're buying Apple products you already have the expectation of a maximum 10 year lifespan just from software alone with just about the entire product lineup.

> Apple gives you a brand new watch.

That seems very wasteful

What if the glass is scratched, will they still replace the watch for $99 ?

As long as it's minor scratching and not big chips or cracks, yes. Another huge plus to the battery service.

Another tip regarding scratches is that the higher tier finishes (Stainless Steel or Titanium in the Series 10) are, in my opinion, worth the price premium solely for the improved screen glass.

Apple barely mentions the spec nowadays, and I'm not sure why they don't tout it. A conspiracy theorist might say that it's because it keeps your watch looking new longer so they'd rather you be buying the cheap one frequently.

The sapphire crystal screen is the killer feature that justifies the upgraded models more than anything else: it's something like a whole extra number higher on the Mohs scale for hardness (scratch resistance).

I buy them on the refurbished store to lessen the pain of their ridiculously inflated price.

Series 4 isn't getting updates anymore, though.

You may have an app draining your battery. Was having the same issue with my watch, I deleted a few apps and all of the sudden my watch was better. I can’t tell you what app was because it was just luck. I was creating space on my phone when it happened.

It most likely has a lot to do with the display tech.

I got 8 days out of the PineTime, which was LED (I assume). You couldn't see anything if the display wasn't turned on.

I just bought a BangleJS (quite a bit cheaper than the Core 2 Duo, but no speaker and only one button) and the estimated battery life is a month. It uses a colour LCD, making the display visible whenever there is light. For example, daylight makes the display bright. It has a light source that gets turned on by the button.

The Core 2 Duo has an e-paper display that only draws power when the display changes.

My Garmin Venu 2 with an OLED display gets at least a week with a couple days of GPS usage for walks too.

I don't understand how anyone is willing to buy a watch that barely lasts a day.

I did a one week test drive of Apple Watch a year and a half ago and I could barely get a day out of it. That alone was a deal breaker for me.

I get about 2 days from my Ultra 1.

The battery on the Ultras is about double the regular series watch batteries, so that tracks. My point was that I was going to struggle with having a device that I couldn't rely on to make it through a full day including the evening— having to take it off for a charging session in the afternoon would be too disruptive for the overall package to be worth it to me.

Sure, but the Ultra is double the price of the normal Apple Watch. ($800)

Although similar battery to my miband 4. Cost me $20 a while back, still amazing.

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