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I preordered but not on preorder day, a few days after, but before it shipped. I was on the fence about getting the first generation and had a lot less disposable income back then. Anyway it was so backed up that it didn’t arrive until early June 2015. The battery life has steadily declined on mine. Lately it has been really inconsistent. Some days it dies at 4pm, other days 8 or 9pm. I don’t even run the exercise app any more. I have nearly every setting dialed back to the minimum and pretty much only receive a few notifications aside from Messages. It’s driving me crazy and my Series 4 44mm SS just won’t ship! Side note: since I haven’t been using it much for exercising and activity I’ve been slowly gaining weight again. It really did help me be more active and healthy. Now that my wife has an Apple Watch for the first time (40mm AL), I’m looking forward to competing with her.
Yep--that's all the stuff I was doing to keep mine running all day too. I can tell you though, as someone who went from Series 0 to Series 4--you are in for a treat.
 
To be honest, I'm sure people would have preferred a slightly larger battery vs the 1mm reduction in thickness.
I actually think watch is too thick. Any reduction in thickness would be great. I'm sure marathon runners would like more battery life but usually they switch to the garmin watches. Everyone else, I think the battery life is enough
 
Coming from a series 0 I’d say the battery life is about double. Can’t speak for series 3 owners. Never saw 20% yet and I ran every day with Apple Music over LTE. If you’re willing to charge it every night than you should have no problems.
 
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So, is it only in Norway that the advice from insurance companies and experts in home fire prevention strongly recommend not to charge your phone, Mac, watch or other devices during the night? I would certainly never ever sleep in a room where one of my gadgets are charging!

Wut. Lol.
What the insurance companies say and what people do are different in this case. I’d wager waaaaaaay more people charge their devices overnight than those that don’t because their afraid their home will catch fire.
 
Wut. Lol.
What the insurance companies say and what people do are different in this case. I’d wager waaaaaaay more people charge their devices overnight than those that don’t because their afraid their home will catch fire.
I assume that he also turns off his cellphone before putting gas in his car -- after all they still have those cellphone verboten stickers on the gas pumps! Never mind that recent iPhones are hermetically sealed, MUST OBEY THE STICKER!
 
They improved energy efficiency and were able to shrink the battery a bit in order to make the watch thinner while maintaining the same battery life is what I suspect. My Series 4 easily lasts all day.
This^^
Apple does the same thing with the iPhone every year, this is not new. They might give the iPhone a modest bump but tout an extra hour due to the new processor.

This is why I think the watch will never get 2 or 3 days of battery because customers want thinner devices and battery always gets shaved.
 
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The biggest problem with my S0 is battery life. Why not keep the extra thickness and increase battery size?
I hated the first-generation Watch's battery life, too. The Series 3 had vastly improved battery life.

Like, where I struggled to get through a day on the first-gen (particularly toward the end of the 2.5 years I used it as the battery aged), Series 3 can get me through 2 days.
 
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Took my SB SS S4 off the charger at 7 am. It is now 5 pm. 10 hours have gone by and I’m at 81%.

To get this all I had to compromise was turning off the auto tracking for Start and Stop of Workouts, and turned off walkie talkie availability when I’m not actually planning on using it.
 
To be honest they could halve the battery of my S3 and it would still be fine for me.
I would actually prefer the watch to be even thinner.
 
Cue the usual complaints about Apple not packing a bigger battery so that we could get multiple day battery life...

It’s better for the planet though....
Well, I'd be happy with 18 hours of heavy (e.g., LTE, exercise, GPS & music) use. Probably a minority, but would be nice to be able to use it through a century bike ride and still have the watch work for the rest of the day.
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I'm seeing the same battery life (once the initial tidying/caching/etc post-install was done).

I'm happy that the smaller Apple Watch has a bigger battery though. My wife's smaller 38mm never lasted as long as mine. Now it will. That's great.

I can still do 6 hour trail runs with mine and it always goes on the charger at night. No big deal.
So - since I was all ready to buy the 4 until I saw the battery reports - after your six hour trail run, does your watch work for the rest of the day - all the way to a reasonable bedtime (e.g., 9-ish or so)?
 
The S4 processor is so much more efficient compared to the S1, its not as taxing on the battery, which it allows the functionality for the watch to run optimally and *way* more fluid compared how the first Gen once was. The Series 4 will vary on battery life anyways with usage and settings, which is easily manageable.
 
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I’ll be the first, why not keep the same size battery and increase the usage time even more? Never makes sense to me.

But then they couldn’t make it thinner...

In all seriousness, that’s what they most likely want to to do and get a case that matches the ‘square-circle’ screen.

Think of Jony Ive’s Patak Phillippe Nautilus which I suspect Ive is aiming the Watch to look something like in the next 1-2 years:

https://www.patek.com/en/collection/nautilus

(Although not with the big bezel I suspect. More having the watch hug the form of the square circle screen that it’s currently got).

I suspect that, like the iPhone, ‘18 hours’ battery life is what they’re happy with for this product. ‘18 hours’ meaning that it’ll survive a workout of around 2 hours and a few hours of LTE usage (calls/music/podcasts) but it’s aimed at being charged each night.

(Although... Maybe just maybe they’ll try and squeeze out a lower power sleep analysing mode for it, too with faster charging in the morning.)

Then they will likely be focussing on reducing the case size and getting the battery and system on a chip to have square circles ‘curves’ to fit into the sort of case that Jony Ive really wants to make.
 
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Now just gut out all that health sensors and add another battery and I'm in.
 
I’ll be the first, why not keep the same size battery and increase the usage time even more? Never makes sense to me.

Agreed. At no point with my S3 have I thought "wow I sure wish they'd have made this thinner."
 
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I don’t why Apple feels “status quo” is good enough when it comes to battery.
 
In the long run, users will want a thinner watch. 1mm isn't much now, but 50% reduction will be appreciated; shaving 1mm reach release will achieve that.
Hmmm .... not if you are buying it for its fitness and connectivity functionality. Then you want it to last all day while you are doing all your activities.
 
Um 18 hours? I just wore my watch for 23 hours (and yes that includes using Sleep++ to track my sleeping) and my watch still had 65% battery left. I've been wearing my watch since 7 eastern and right now I have 88% left. I don't see why anyone couldn't get through a day easily with the series 4.
I don't get the 18 hours thing either. When I put mine on the charger last night it still had like 60% left. I would have to really use the heck out of it to get it to go belly up in 18 hours.
 
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My first impressions on battery life hasn’t been great on my series 4

Need to do more testing

Took it off charger at 14.30 and by mid night it’s at 65%
 
The Series 4 uses a smaller lithography for its SoC, meaning it uses less power to perform the same operations of an identical design but larger lithography chip.

They /could/ have kept the battery the same size and increased useful life, but we see how that turned out. Maybe next year.
 
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I’ve consistently gotten about 2 1/2 days with S0, S3, and my new S4. I receive notifications and texts, dismiss phone calls from unknown numbers, accept them from known (and converse on my official Dick Tracy Wrist Radio - god I’m old, since I know that reference :), check the weather, monitor my heart rate, and probably a bunch of stuff I’ve forgotten. I don’t use it to listen to music, or monitor workouts.

Don’t know how typical I am, but I’m happy with the battery life. When my watch tells me it’s time to recharge, I also put my iPhone X on the charging stand (and swap my Sparq lighter for a charged one).
 
Only having the watch a few days now, I feel like the series 3 battery lasted me longer than my new series 4. It is likely exacerbated by the fact that I have the new watch face with all of the icons and I've not turned down the brightness of the screen.
 
Agreed. At no point with my S3 have I thought "wow I sure wish they'd have made this thinner."

It’s worth making a note of ‘regular’ watch trends.

For about the last 10 years, watch cases have been growing in size so that a typical ‘man’s’ sports/dive/pilot watch was 42-48mm.

This trend is now reversing - no doubt (in part) due to the trend for vintage watches which tend to be smaller than today’s watches - and we’re seeing watches shrink down again so that a typical man’s sports/dive watch is down to 42-44mm.

Note: Sean Connery wore a Rolex Submariner in the original Bond movies that was 38mm - and that’s seen on the smaller side nowadays! And it makes it kinda funny when people say that the smaller Apple Watch is ‘not for guys’ - I don’t think that most would say that Connery in the early Bonds isn’t macho!

As far as ‘men’s’ dress watches go, companies like Tudor are now routinely putting out ‘man’s’ watches at 36, 38, 39 & 41mm. We’re even seeing watches go down to 36-38mm from some manufacturers (including Tudor).

I’m saying this as it’s worth seeing where the Apple Watch fits in with the overall trend for ‘regular’ watches - which is that they’re getting sleeker and smaller.

So we shouldn’t all be surprised to see Apple aim for the same. Jony Ive (and many others at Apple) know a great deal about regular watch making & collecting and I doubt that the case size and shape of series 4 is exactly where they want the product to be.
 
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