Is anyone seriously surprised by this?
Of course the iwatch would have a negative impact on the phone's battery... (duh!)
On one hand, the constant connection to the watch itself... and on the other, all the processes and data connections the phone has to perform on behalf of the watch. And all this, on top of the fact that the phone could barely survive a whole day of medium-heavy use...
I would've guess most people getting the first gen watch would be aware of this, and be part of the experiment as an early adopter. Same goes for the watch's 2-3 year battery life.
What is a bit surprising (well, not really) is that Apple didn't disclose any of this before the launch, so people became aware of the impact on their phone.
Oh well... business is business.
Nice inventive scenario (sic), but false.
Those processes you talk about are negligeable, simple as that. Most of the heavy lifting is done by the apps updating your emails, sms, imessages ALREADY. When those messages arrive, the app which has been sitting doing next to nothing wakes up, processes the message, sends to the watch, then waits for a reply from the watch (none of these things are big battery users) so it can do the needed action.
BT LE has an negligeable impact on battery unless your watch is very far from the phone. Even then, its not going to have a big impact.
There are a few things though that may be impacted because you use them more, or changed your settings because you use the watch:
- Siri is seemingly more useful on the watch, which means it will be used more
- GPS is likely to be used more because its very convenient to have a map and turn by turn nav on your arm. People will also use it when they exercise. GPS is a notorious battery eater.
- Notification, especially push notifications. If you switched your notifications from polling to push (so you get notified as soon as they are sent), your going to impact the battery on your phone (even if you had)
- Keeping your phone in your purse or back pocket instead of out. Reception may be worse, so it would use a bit more battery
On plus side, not opening your phone and its screen and not activating the mail or message apps, should save quite a bit of battery. This would normally compensate for most of the new usages on the phone (except GPS, which uses just too much juice to be compensated).
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My experience is that the Watch isn't suffering much on my morning run (not like a Garmin) but my iPhone is reducing more than it would. But I guess the iPhone is doing the gps work. The Watch seems to ramp up it's HR sampling from every 10 mins to constantly when doing a 'workout'
Off course, if the GPS is on, it will impact the phone (especially if it wasn't something you were using in this way before). GPS is a notorious battery muncher. If you can go without, once it learns your stride, do so. That's what Christie Turlington said
Watch, has anybody noticed that 8.3 is yet another battery drainer update? I mean my iPhone 6+ seems to hold less battery than it used to with 8.1.3... so I guess no surprise that phone is draining..
