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Apple Watch Fulfills Promise of All-Day Battery Life in Early Reviews

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Apr 12, 2001
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Apple lifted the embargo for large websites to publish their Apple Watch reviews this morning, providing us with detailed insight about various functions of the device. Battery life in particular has been one area of interest for several prospective Apple Watch buyers, and most early reviews found the Apple Watch to fulfill its promise of all-day battery life on a single charge.

Well-known tech journalist Joanna Stern of The Wall Street Journal offers one of the better looks at the Apple Watch's battery life in her video of using the device in day-to-day life. The video keeps track of how much battery life the Apple Watch uses while Stern goes about her daily routine in New York, with the device fully charged at 7:30 AM and having five percent remaining at just past midnight.

Apple confirmed last month that the Apple Watch will have up to 18 hours of battery life with mixed usage, and last up to 72 hours in Power Reserve mode. Early reviews find the Apple Watch generally on par with, or falling slightly short of, those numbers based on articles published by Daring Fireball, The Verge, The Wall Street Journal, Techpinions and Re/code. We've compiled those findings in the roundup below.

John Gruber, Daring Fireball:
"After more than a week of daily use, Apple Watch has more than alleviated any concerns I had about getting through a day on a single charge. I noted the remaining charge when I went to bed each night. It was usually still in the 30s or 40s. Once it was still over 50 percent charged. Once, it was down to 27. And one day -- last Thursday -- it was all the way down to 5 percent. But that day was an exception -- I used the watch for an extraordinary amount of testing, nothing at all resembling typical usage. I'm surprised the watch had any remaining charge at all that day. I never once charged the watch other than while I slept."
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Nilay Patel, The Verge:
"By the end of each day, I was hyper-aware of how low the Apple Watch battery had gotten. After one particularly heavy day of use, I hit 10 percent battery at 7pm, triggering a wave of anxiety. But most days were actually fine. Apple had a big challenge getting a tiny computer like this to last a day, and it succeeded -- even if that success seemingly comes at the expense of performance."
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Geoffrey Fowler, The Wall Street Journal:
"The battery lives up to its all-day billing, but sometimes just barely. It's often nearly drained at bedtime, especially if I've used the watch for exercise. There's a power-reserve mode that can make it last a few hours longer, but then it only shows the time."
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Ben Bajarin, Techpinions:
"From my experience with battery life, Apple appears to have undersold it. The Apple Watch easily lasted a day, even a long day of heavy use. My Apple Watch battery never got below 20% and only once even got close to that. The day it did was a long day when I took it off the charger at 5:45am and used it frequently, including tracking my activity during a two hour tennis match, and I didn't plug it back in until 10:30pm.

With my average usage, I tried to see how long I could go and several times over the week got nearly two days of battery life. This will obviously vary by person, but the fact Apple Watch users will not have to worry about battery life over the course of the day no matter how heavy it is used is important for the experience."
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Lauren Goode, Re/code:
"Apple has promised that the battery will last 18 hours per charge with normal use. It hasn't yet died on me during the day, or even late at night. My iPhone actually conked out before the Watch did; this happened to Bonnie, too.

One day this past week, I woke up at 5:15 am, exercised for an hour using the Watch, ran Maps during my commute, made phones calls and received notifications throughout the whole day, and by 11:00 pm the Watch was just hitting its Power Reserve point."
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Apple Watch goes on sale April 24, with pre-orders and try-ons beginning April 10.

Article Link: Apple Watch Fulfills Promise of All-Day Battery Life in Early Reviews
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2015/04/08/apple-watch-battery-life-reviews/
Just finished watching the Verge review. In a nutshell....it's useless and nothing more than a toy.

Even fashion experts dismissed it and the most useful feature.....Apple Pay....which you have on your iPhone 6, so it's a $350 extension to this.
 
beanbaguk said:
Just finished watching the Verge review. In a nutshell....it's useless and nothing more than a toy.

Even fashion experts dismissed it and the most useful feature.....Apple Pay....which you have on your iPhone 6, so it's a $350 extension to this.
Click to expand...

"useless"

"toy"

the most informative of reviews. thank god so many countless numbers of people tell us this about our favorite devices and computers, or we might, y'know, continue loving them so much. :rolleyes:
 
That's good to hear

Hard to know what exactly these reviewers were doing all day with the watch. Also this is the first round of "selected" reviewers, so they are most likely Apple sycophants that were just happy to get their hands on the watch without any real attempt to give it a critical review.

I'll wait for more real-life reviews. I am sure the battery will be good, but I mean I can drain a iPad, iPhone battery quickly for no apparent reason, or it can last 2 days+, so there is no rhyme or reason to battery usage on an iDevice and its more about what crappy app you are running rather than a fault of the hardware or OS.

But battery is just one of the many things I want to know about the Apple watch, I'm more interested in its usability outside of the hyped up use cases, like exercise or notifications.

Will this be a platform with a million usable apps, or a platform of 4 good apps and a million half baked ideas that go nowhere.
 
Locoboof said:
That's good to know the battery will live up to what apple has said. I'll be honest,it was one of my biggest concerns.
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Too early to call it I’m afraid. They said the same about the phones. We need to know what happens in the real world where it does things like waste energy trying to connect to things, like a phone does when signal is low.
 
So much like an iPhone, this brand new device just scrapes through to the end of the day. Wait until you've been using it for a year ...
 
H2SO4 said:
Too early to call it I’m afraid. They said the same about the phones. We need to know what happens in the real world where it does things like waste energy trying to connect to things, like a phone does when signal is low.
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True......but it's better than all of them saying it go no where close to 10 hours.
 
H2SO4 said:
Too early to call it I’m afraid. They said the same about the phones. We need to know what happens in the real world where it does things like waste energy trying to connect to things, like a phone does when signal is low.
Click to expand...

i think it's almost safe to say these reports are above average usage. they're tasked with testing it, alongside the familiar feeling of having a new gadget so you want to use it 24/7. i always get crappy battery charges the first week or two of owning a new 'thing' cause i'm inclined to touch it whenever i can.
 
Well, my fears of the watch seem to be confirmed. I was wondering if Apple could make a watch that would last all day for me, and this tells me "no". If these review units were hitting low battery by midnight, I couldn't make it all day on one. I have the iPhone 6 Plus, and can't make it all day without recharging it before I leave work at the end of the day. Yet reviewers somehow get a day + out of the same phone. So with my battery consumption of the 6 Plus, I'm assuming that the watch would be completely dead before I left work.
 
No surprise. And clearly mileage will vary for everyone based on their usage/# of alerts/activity/etc

No different than Android Wear - but clearly all of these watches need more charging than the Pebble given the tech involved.
 
Apple, kindly please detail what's normal usage? Is it turning off... notification, brightness, bluetooth, etc... #

I sure need my 18 hours or just use a sundial.
 
I love MacRumors... but it seemingly becoming more and more pro-Apple. Headlines like "Apple Watch Fulfills Promise of All-Day Battery Life in Early Reviews" and "Apple Watch Review Roundup: The 'World's Best Smartwatch" ... makes the site feel more like a 'fanboy community', not an impartial news source.

MR is still the best for Mac news, but I just fear things may start looking a bit 'bias', and I may go elsewhere.
 
iZac said:
So much like an iPhone, this brand new device just scrapes through to the end of the day. Wait until you've been using it for a year ...
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Actually this is a legitimate point.

My 18 month old iPhone 5C was replaced because I damaged it.

Previously, an 8 hour shift at work (in an area of low signal) would mean I had to charge my phone almost as soon as I got home at night. The new phone was on 70% at the end of today's shift.

I wonder what the Watch will be like after two years of uncharge/charge cycles?
 
I personally love my watches but can't wear this everyday. I kind of agree with the undertone of most reviews saying version 2 is the one to get.

Now Apple wish list please
Fix notifications
Make it a round face
Make it have gps

That's all I want :)

It does look ssweet tho
 
All Apple devices start off with great battery life. Then after hundreds of re-chargings and 2-3 years of use, your battery life expectency slips.

I'd hate to spend big bucks on one of these and have crappy battery life after 1-2 years of daily use.
 
Probably won't buy the first iteration unless it really impresses me in person.

I am, however, looking forward to having this device because as a motorcycle rider having the ability to see notifications, etc while riding will be fantastic.

If they maps app is anything useful that would be awesome as well.
 
thekeyring said:
Actually this is a legitimate point.

My 18 month old iPhone 5C was replaced because I damaged it.

Previously, an 8 hour shift at work (in an area of low signal) would mean I had to charge my phone almost as soon as I got home at night. The new phone was on 70% at the end of today's shift.

I wonder what the Watch will be like after two years of uncharge/charge cycles?
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Let's not forget that the Apple Watch will most likely be charged DAILY, which may degrade battery performance in a shorter amount of time.
 
Wait... there's ANOTHER Apple Watch thread already. I suppose moderator rules don't apply to moderators.

>__>
 
So she thought it was awkward to put her wrist up for apple pay but not awkward to wear a giant SLR camera on her head?
 
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