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Comment by com2kid | Hacker News Reader

I have no idea how the 2 major smart watches (android wear, apple watch) have such horrible battery life. Microsoft Band had a 3 day battery life that would've been 5 days if we weren't forced to use a trash accelerometer that drained our battery by a crazy amount.

That aside, Android wear being a complete OS is a waste of power. There aren't any useful apps for it that take advantage of the watch running a full OS.

I'm also miffed that OS updates have dropped by pixel watch's battery life from 3 days down to 1 and a half.

Good on Pebble for taking a reasonable approach to watch OS design. I presume apple decided they are minting money with a 2-ish day battery life so why bother improving things, but it is sad that most companies don't care about doing the right thing anymore.

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garmin is arguably one major smart watch vendor and has a great battery life

Garmin is more fitness tracker than smartwatch.

As someone who has only ever had a Garmin, what am I missing from other smartwatches?

Charging it up every night.

based on these comments, bad battery life?

I get notifications for text messages, phone calls, and emails on my VivoActive 6. There are also good apps; for instance, the built-in (free) golf app is great. Battery lasts over a week, too. So far, I'm pretty happy with it and don't feel the need to get an Apple Watch which requires charging every day.

I take it you don’t have a garmin? You can play music directly from it (spotify, YouTube music, etc apps). You get phone notifications, can respond to text messages, make payments, and newer versions include LTE. They are absolutely a smart watch.

Does it last 2 weeks with that kind of usage?

My Enduro 2 lasts around that long, with about 1.5-2 hours of daily GPS tracking for running, part of 4 hours total exercise tracking per day, and underlying background fitness data collection (HR, respiration, temperature etc. including sleep).

As I write, it's at 37% with 6 days left of charge. And it charges 0 to 100% in around 2 hours.

I used to use a fancy Movado / Android Wear watch that without word of a lie could die before 8pm on almost minimal use. It was an absolutely redundant item to own.

Yup. Garmin battery life is insane. I keep seeing people comment how they charge their watches on a near daily basis and that's just insane to me.

I charge my fenix 7 solar maybe once a month. My use case is about 10 hours a week of activity tracking, usually trail runs. This goes up to about 20 hours a week in the summer but i dont recharge much more often. I use garmin pay and occasionally listen to podcasts on my watch while running. I also use the on-watch maps quite a bit on my trail runs.

I'd say Garmin has all of the features a smartwatch typically has that are worth having (notifications, fitness tracking, basic controls ie. music).

For anything else, smartwatches are simply too awkward and small for any real use. Better just to spend a second or two to get your phone out.

I can get days out of my Samsung Watch 7 if I turn off everything like the always on display, constant health tracking, Wifi, etc. But I don't.

The Nothing CMF Watch has a true (two?) week-long battery life due to its RTOS, but it's kind of mediocre otherwise. More like a souped up Casio.

Oppo and OnePlus have around 10 days with a full Android Wear system using a clever hybrid technologie running another low powered OS when Wear is not required.

The market is very different nowadays than when the Pebble came out.

Withings smart watches are kind of insane with 30 day battery life, but the subscription farming in the app is infuriating.

All I want from a smart watch:

- Waterproof, wireless charging, at least a week of battery life

- Automatically track exercise and sleep, let me update the data if needed.

- Track my fitness trends over time, looking at you resting heart rate

- Optionally, learn a couple of recurring patterns to improve automatic exercise assignment. If I hike twice a week and you see an exercise session with a consistent heart rate profile you better believe I am hiking

Not just subscription farming, you cannot use the latest mobile app versions without agreeing to data mining. Their business model now is literally collecting user health and usage data to resell to other companies and of course for AI training. Avoid.

Garmin are pretty decent. I have an Enduro 2 which lasts a fortnight on a charge (currently 37% with 6 days of charge left).

It's waterproof. Unfortunately no wireless charging (proprietary cable) but it charges 2 weeks worth in about 2 hours.

It doesn't automatically track exercise, but it does collect a lot more (and higher quality) data than Withings for activity. Automatic sleep. The app has the trends and such, and there's no subscription (they recently added some AI stuff you can pay for but which is optional).

Easy, as you point out, they are using the wrong OS stack.

My Amazfit lasts weeks on a single charge, and besides I don't need an app store on my phone.

Pixel fan here: I think the Pixel Watch 1, 2 and 3 were a big disappointment in terms of battery life. I was barely getting 1 day out of them, many times less than that. Pixel Watch 4 has significantly improved the situation. Now I routinely get at least 3 days out of it (and this is the 4G LTE variant). Still someways to go, I think the holy grail is one week, but at least it is now quite usable.

PS: why is this even an issue? How hard is it to make straps with batteries in them..

For what it does, the battery life of the Apple Watch 11 is not that bad. It typically lasts more than 48h for me and charges very quickly. Putting it to charge when taking a shower is enough to not have to think about battery life.

48h is still pretty bad honestly.

Fair, but that means you have to bring a special purpose charger with you anytime you go somewhere for more than ~36 hours. For me, that's the bigger issue. If I could charge inductively on the back of my iPhone, for example, I wouldn't mind as much.

I hear you, personally grabbing the charger for overnight stays hasn't been a problem but there are a few compact/inexpensive third-party dongles that are like the official charging cable but without the cable[0]. They can be stay in a car, laptop bag, etc. and charge the watch from an iPhone or another usb-c power source.

[0] Random example for illustration https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CKV9JBR4

Huh interesting, I guess that would help somewhat. But for me, I prefer to pretty much never have to worry about charging my watch.

As a kid, I had watches that didn't need new batteries for years. As an adult, I was willing to trade off some battery life (down to a week or so) in order to get notifications my wrist, music controls, and activity tracking.

Although I can see some benefit in being able to see my Uber status in real time, or other app-related functionality, I am not interested in charging a wearable every day or two. I don't want to have to worry about whether I'm "using my watch too much" to be able to make it through a short trip, or until the end of my second day.

I know some people have different preferences on this, but for me a watch should be something that doesn't require any maintenance for weeks at a time.

> As a kid, I had watches that didn't need new batteries for years.

Haha, my kid just got his first watch for Christmas. A Casio. He loves it.

On the box, it’s written « 10 years of autonomy » and I was like « oh, I forgot it was a thing ».

I use a solar-powered Casio wave ceptor.

No batteries ever, and the time is always accurate. I haven't touched a button on the watch in years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_Wave_Ceptor

Samsung had this reverse charging from the phone but they also dropped that function with the watch 7 :(

Having said that I did use it but it was terribly slow and both the phone and watch heated up too much. And the positioning was very finicky. A whole charge would last 3-4 hours where the official charger is 30-40 minutes.

Power banks with watch charging also exist and cheap aftermarket charging pucks. Not as fast as the included one but not bad.

48 hours is bad. Newer garmin watches measure their battery life in weeks, not hours. It's crazy how behind on this apple is.

> works at Microsoft

> it is sad that most companies don't care about doing the right thing anymore

Throw rocks once you’ve stopped the windows 11 spam machine.

I haven't worked at Microsoft since 2015.

Currently running Linux on my home PC because I can't stand windows 11.

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