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Comment by blobbers | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, Apple Watch battery life is atrocious compared to competing models. Their marketing and ecosystem is better.

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IMO there's a gap between "charge every day" and "charge once a week" that needs to be crossed.

In other words, if they made the battery last twice as long it'd still be equally as annoying (since your daily routine would be nearly the same, except now you also need to remember if it's a charge day or non-charge day).

To be fair maybe 3/4 days buys you some convenience. But anyways charging once a day is a reasonable place to get to, to get something better would require at minimum a 3x improvement which probably means a ground-up rework instead of continuous refinement.

A battery band might get you there but I suspect it'd be too clunky. At best Apple may redesign their watch to support a battery band and allow 3rd parties to make them for folks that need weeks of battery life.

For me, it comes down to two things. First, I do not want to have to charge every night since I use my watch as a silent vibrating alarm, and I track my sleep. It seems like Apple has basically overcome this hurdle, now that you can charge while you shower and basically get by.

The other issue is that I don't want to have to bring Yet Another Dongle™ every time I go away for a weekend or short business trip. Most of my trips are ≤ 4 days, so if AWs could reliably go that long (including battery degradation over time) then I'd consider getting one.

Right now, only the AWU even approaches this, and only in low-power mode. If it weren't a thousand dollars, I'd consider it. But between the low-power requirement and the pricing, it's just no contest in my book. I'm getting a new Pebble, which offers a month of battery life at 1/3 of the cost.

> The other issue is that I don't want to have to bring Yet Another Dongle™

I think reverse charging from your smartphone is a quite decent solution to the problem, which is supported by certain Android devices.

If this were possible, it would definitely make a difference for me.

I am surprised Apple doesn't sell a battery band for people who want a weeks charge.

That would be slick. Perhaps the problem is it would get hot, and possibly burn?

I watched the announcement yesterday and was very surprised to hear the watch battery life is still so shocking.

Especially considering how useful sleep data is, then I was surprised to see they're only getting sleep scores now.

My dirt cheap Huawei watches have had this for years. It's accurate enough (my own perception based on use). And I get a weeks battery life too (although I don't have the distracting fancy notifications perhaps). It does check blood oxygen levels, heart rate, stress etc.

I truly thought this was a solved problem (looking at headphones battery life, although I might need to check my assumptions here also apply to Airpods).

The watch has sleep data (for example phase durations like rem sleep and apnoe), the health app just doesn’t compute a „score“.

> I truly thought this was a solved problem.

I charge when showering in the morning. 15 minutes is enough for the day + night, half an hour to charge it fully.

That's not bad

I switched from Apple Watch to a Garmin Venu. The battery lasts for a week, and many of the sensors are more accurate.

And that's the fancy screen, gimmick edition garmin watch - the normal MIP display garmin watches (even an old, midrange Forerunner 255) will easily get a couple of weeks of battery life, more for the higher end ones.

OLED is just the wrong screen tech for these devices, never made any sense to me given how little I care about graphics and how little time I spend reading the display.

But it's not the screen that causes it to lose energy as fast, but the general purpose OS with a decent CPU.

New one is 24 hours is that still atrocious

Yes. My Pebble Steel got over a week of battery in 2015, had physical, tactile buttons that worked even wearing thick winter gloves, and had an always-on-no-matter-what screen that was clearly readable in full sunlight.

Every smartwatch that hasn't met that bar, which is almost all of them ever made, is a joke to me. I'd have ordered a RePebble had I not moved back to analogue dumbwatches instead just before they were announced (and were iOS not actively hostile to competing watch implementations).

Isn’t that a laggy b&w screen, with no ability to respond to notifs, no cellular. I guess those are ok for some users

If you are okay with less smart smart watches, and okay with no hackability, Garmin should have a few with black and white display and >1 week battery life (even indefinite with sufficient solar).

That’s not really the same category of device

And motorcycles get way better gas mileage than cars. But it’s still odd to frame a (totally understandable!) preference for one product category in those terms.

Yes. Simply yes for a lot of people.

Are those people who don’t need interactivity, ability to respond to notifs, cellular, etc or are you comparing with something comparable

I think a lot of people reach into their pocket and get their phone out if they need "interactivity, ability to respond to notifs, cellular, etc"

But if you want to leave your smartphone at home, but you still want cellular and notifications, I agree the apple watch is the only game in town even if the battery life sucks.

real watches last like 24 months minimum

And bicycles go much further without needing petrol than cars.

I agree that Apple Watches don't last long enough between charges, but comparing them to a completely different class of device that's technically the same broad category is pointless.

Most of this is because of the always-on screen. If you can live without it and switch back to the motion or button to wake mode, you get 30-50% more usage before the battery runs out, which is not a huge improvement but is a legitimate option.

A side effect is that this makes your watch look less new, and therefore less of a theft target.

Yep, easily the worst part of mine, especially since it has to charge at a different time than my phone to allow for sleep tracking.

Yes, my 5 year old Garmin still lasts about 10 days. And thats with using GPS tracking + bluetooth audio for multiple recorded activities.

depends which camp of apple watch (or smart watch in general) users you are asking.

the camp that sees the smartwatch as an accessory to their smartphone that does fitness tracking and maybe a few other useful things to avoid pulling their phone out constantly - those people want MUCH longer battery life.

the camp that sees the smartwatch as a REPLACEMENT to their smartphone, they are perfectly fine with the current battery life.

I am closer to the first camp than the second, and I don’t understand why I would need longer battery life. The watch charges very quickly, and there is never a day when I don’t have the chance to charge at some point. I usually do it during my morning shower.

1. People use these GPS watches for Ironman triathlons, ultra running & cycling events etc. They can't and won't charge before the battery is done - and remember the battery with a daily charge will degrade significantly. If it's borderline on release, it'll be inadequate after a year.

2. Just for general convenience, having to take another special cable for every late night or overnight trip is maddening. I always have a phone anyway for any actual interactions.

I find it hard to believe many people are writing texts on their watches, it's just a nice to have gimmick feature that everyone I know has stopped using.

> and remember the battery with a daily charge will degrade significantly. If it's borderline on release, it'll be inadequate after a year.

That has not been my experience though - having used both an Apple Watch and a Pixel Watch for years on end every single day. Absolutely outside my area of expertise, but I would imagine that you can design batteries to have a much longer lifetime (no of recharge cycles) when their capacity is smaller.

That’s not how Lion charging works - degradation and lifetime (to a first approximation) depend on full charges. If you charge daily from 80% to 100% or charge every 5 days from 1% to 100%, your battery degradation and lifetime will be the same.

My biggest complaint with my Apple Watch is that I have to choose between sleep tracking and being able to wear my watch all day.

Why? You can get 8 hours of sleep tracking for a 5 minute charge. You really can't charge your watch for 5 minutes before bed? How about during your bathroom routine?

You are brushing your teeth for like half that alone.

The new one isn't actually longer. It's just that they changed how they measure it. It assumes 16 awake hours and 8 asleep hours, so the watch lasts 24 hours, but only when you are sleeping and thus not using it for 8 hours.

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