Apple Watch Series 4 Models Have Nearly 20% Less Battery Capacity Despite Same 'Up to 18 Hours' Battery Life

[gcraig]

As a reminder many things will impact an individual owner's battery life. For instance, if you use the new face options which have like 9-10 complications you are keeping each of those complications executing in the background which is added drain on battery life. Fitness tracking with heavy gps use and obviously heavy LTE communication use will both draw a fair amount of juice. Curious to see so many opinions on this or that being "stupid" move by Apple as if they might not have done a tad of market research or heard any feedback from the market on what works and what doesn't. As remarked by someone else above there is a reason this is the best selling watch in the world and Apple is now adding second manufacturer to keep up with demand for the Watch 4. It's an amazing piece of equipment and a quite feat of engineering and design.

 

[Regbial]

We're talking about the S4 processor, not the iPod Touch. Try to pay attention and keep up with the discussion here.

Again, we are talking about a mistake APPLE HAS DONE IN THE PAST. How is it not relevant....???????????
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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.

I was at the mall and I saw a guy who was about to buy his Apple watch be told by the attendant the smaller one “is for women”, bigger one “is for men”. I cringed. I hate how subversive and insidious these dumb sexist stereotypes are in society. My wrists are small and I’m a guy. I’m not insecure like the incels with their “wristcel” moniker. This stuff is insane.

I embrace my wrists the way they are, it really is handy as hell to have smaller wrists. And besides, doesn’t a smaller watch make your wrist look bigger?

Also just my personal opinion but who wants to lug around a big heavy watch? (Unless you want the workout I guess...) (not talking about the Apple Watch since even the larger one seems an adequete size, not too huge, but there are some high end watches out there that seem so damn obstrusive.)

 

[chucker23n1]

Again, we are talking about a mistake APPLE HAS DONE IN THE PAST. How is it not relevant....???????????

Apple once shipped a processor that was more power-efficient but didn't use less power?

 

[G5isAlive]

The big screen wouldn't hurt, and heart rate tracking is also much improved (series 0 has no resting/walking heart rate, no notifications, and less frequent measurements, AIUI).

So it's definitely better. Is it $400 better? Not for an impulse-buy for me right now.

The ECG stuff and other heartrate improvements may be enough for a relative of mine to make the jump, though; he doesn't have a watch yet.

I'd also use more apps if the device were faster and apps were available. But even a series 4 won't buy me useful apps. WatchKit has gotten better in OS 5, but is still limited enough that Apple doesn't dogfood it. Not great.

On the Watch and on Apple TV, Apple hasn't yet managed to create a thriving app market. That's kind of a bummer.

(This sounds far more negative than I feel about it — the Series 4 is definitely quite a valuable upgrade. It's just that, depending on how you use it or don't use it, its usefulness varies wildly.)

Didn't sound negative to me... just well thought out. For me, and I stress I am not a patient person, the SO was never fast enough to read email or really do much at all besides tell time, see the temperature outside, occasionally act as a timer...oh, and it worked okay with directions (maps running on the iPhone).

S4 on the other hand is fast enough to encourage me to look at other apps. and yes read email. view pictures. receive phone calls. it really has freed me up from carrying my phone every single place I go in the house even.

And I can not tell you how much I am enjoying watch OS5 (not available on S0). Yes, even the raise to speak Siri...(I get that a lot of people don't like Siri, but I do).

the larger watch face, the additional of complications.. you really don't know what you are missing until you have them.

So... if you really do like the S0... you are going to love the S4. I recommend rather than considering it an impulse buy, you take advantage of Apple's return policy. Your S0 is going no where and has no real return value, so you have nothing to lose (except some pairing time) by exploring the S4 in the only meaningful way there is, on your wrist. My guess is you won't return it... but you can.
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It's not. I do sometimes forget to, though, and I don't always reliably get a low power notification from it (or sometimes I forget even that).

Definitely a first-world problem, but not one to be ignored.

On nights I drink too much, err forget, to put it on my nightstand charger when I go to sleep, I find there was usually enough power to get me comfortably through the second day. If I party two nights in a row, I have other problems generally.

The good news is on my S4, with 8 complications, I can allocate one to battery power and see with every glance (91%) how close I am to needing to charge. And if I have forgotten two nights in a row, I take it off for an hour at work and charge it on my desktop stand.

All it takes is planning ahead to make sure you have chargers where you spend most of your time For me thats the nightstand and work. I have not found it necessary to put on in the bathroom yet. I admit I am not aware of a good one for the car.

 

[chucker23n1]

And I can not tell you how much I am enjoying watch OS5 (not available on S0). Yes, even the raise to speak Siri...(I get that a lot of people don't like Siri, but I do).

I do have to wonder how much better Siri and Continuity Unlock (Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac) would work on a newer model. However, performance is only part of the problem — they also just randomly fail, at a worryingly high rate. Not a very pleasant experience.

It's possible they fail for performance reasons (a timeout?), but I'm not so sure.

All it takes is planning ahead to make sure you have chargers where you spend most of your time For me thats the nightstand and work. I have not found it necessary to put on in the bathroom yet. I admit I am not aware of a good one for the car.

When I notice in the morning that it hasn't charged enough, I take the cable with me to work. That's a bit weird, but, again, sort of a first-world problem. I don't find battery life that bothersome on the S0. Yet, anyway.
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So... if you really do like the S0... you are going to love the S4. I recommend rather than considering it an impulse buy, you take advantage of Apple's return policy. Your S0 is going no where and has no real return value, so you have nothing to lose (except some pairing time) by exploring the S4 in the only meaningful way there is, on your wrist. My guess is you won't return it... but you can.

There's always Christmas.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Talk about unecessary hardware — take a look at the iFixt tear down, the Digital Crown mechanism is huge. There’s no reason for the Digital Crown. There’s nothing it does that can’t be handled by a scroll bar along the edge of the bezel. It’s there because Jony wants it there.

The Taptic Engine is so large mainly to provide the wrist taps which are a a hallmark of the device. While I agree feedback for 3D Touch is unecessary, as it is for the Digital Crown, it’s likely necessary for a tap that regigisters on the arm as an alert tap.

For so many people complaining Apple Watch is not Round like traditional watches, nobody has complained about the Digital Crown.

The Crown is useful, familiar, and has absolutely no need for end user training: intuitive. Every device that’s used a dígital slider - HTC H20 Windows Phone for example has failed and never came out with a second iteration. So much to train with sensitivity of touch which varies from person to person, software glitches and hiccups (not hardware bound), and end user training on operation. Apple can do this but most likely will not due to the end user complexity it brings.

This years mechanism as well as the Haptic Engine remaining in size IS something to be appalled at!

Personally using the S3, is sense resistance when I scrolled beyond a scrolling point end so I see no reason for this “Digital” Digital Crown in the first place.

Eventually capacitive touch zones may show up as “digital buttons” in a future Appe Watch but not for a few years longer. Not something I’d want to have but hey most likely it’ll happen.

 

[G5isAlive]

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!

So are these recommendations Apple specific (as in they actually have facts to back up concerns) or just appliances in general that have lithium batteries? I am willing to bet the majority of these 'experts' don't take their own advice... and really what does one expect from an insurance company? They also advise you never exceed the speed limit, fully digest your food before swimming, don't wander into neighborhoods you have no experience with, never use credit cards over the internet, turn off valves on all your gas appliances when leaving the house...

Just how many Apple devices have you ever seen catch fire personally? Family? Friends? Acquaintances? In the whole country of Norway?

Of the millions of apple watches (billions for phones now) that have been sold... how many have ever caught fire? I googled to find out and there seems to be no conclusive data.

Sorry, just find it funny that a person would not worry about wearing a lithium battery on their wrist, carrying one in the pocket near their 'valuables' and sit staring at one a couple of feet away... and not worrying about those fires.. but worry about the potential for a fire while static charging at night. I suppose one could say, charging is a higher risk, and maybe it is, but do you always sit in the room while your devices are charging? and just how big of a fire will the Apple Watch battery make if it did catch fire? Me, I have fire alarms to protect me from anything that might catch fire at night. The list of non battery devices that can catch fire in the night is long and distinguished.

But I have no doubt that there are 'experts' that will advise again taking any risk. and those that will follow it.

 

[danpass]

They better have needed that space.

Otherwise it always struck as downright stupid to downgrade a battery when putting in more efficient electronics.

Why not go for the "24 hours battery life" ??

 

[G5isAlive]

I do have to wonder how much better Siri and Continuity Unlock (Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac) would work on a newer model. However, performance is only part of the problem — they also just randomly fail, at a worryingly high rate. Not a very pleasant experience.

It's possible they fail for performance reasons (a timeout?), but I'm not so sure.



When I notice in the morning that it hasn't charged enough, I take the cable with me to work. That's a bit weird, but, again, sort of a first-world problem. I don't find battery life that bothersome on the S0. Yet, anyway.
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There's always Christmas.

Well, again, you're experience is with the S0 (not putting you down). With the S4 your mileage WILL vary. Don't know the technical reason why, if its time out, or CPU, or signal strength, I just know I don't have any real problems with continuity unlock for example, its my go to stupid Mac trick for my PC friends... 'see, I just walk up to my computer and it unlocks for me!' Always impresses. never fails.

And yeah, my new stupid watch trick is 'raise to speak', where I no long have to say 'hey Siri', but just 'how far to...' or 'call home' or 'what's the weather lol'. Okay have to admit that annoys the wife. But yelling out 'hey siri' does too.

But okay, I can only say so many times, 'The S4 feels and acts like a totally different watch than the S0'... Christmas is indeed coming.

But in the meantime, treat yourself to a second charge cord for work. Even the apple certified ones on Amazon aren't that expensive.

 

[mdlooker]

I used to get through a day with my S3 cellular with around 80% battery left, will see how I get on with the S4 Cellular.

I just put mine on the charger with 81% remaining after being on my wrist just under 22hrs.

 

[Mac 128]

Turning the crown feels much, much nicer to me than swiping on the screen does. That's in part because the screen is just fairly small, making any kind of interaction hard. It's also in part because scroll wheels feel satisfying. I miss that from the iPod mini / early nano (no, seriously): scrolling through music with a clickwheel just felt nice in a way swiping on a touch screen never quite did.

(It doesn't follow that I want a scroll wheel on an iPhone. But I can totally see it on the Watch, and it works well for me there.)

I didn't mean to imply swiping as a method to scroll. Rather a touch bar on the side of the bezel, which could provide the exact same degree of incremental fine tuned control as the digital crown. It could even be segmented with haptic feedback, just like the crown. Personally, I find the digital crown extremely finicky, and not particularly intuitive in some cases. The fact Apple added a tiny scroll bar next to the crown to indicate where the user is supposed to scroll reflects that in part. It's also a very tiny scroll bar, as opposed to one that would run the full length of the watch face, and provide more detailed information. Want to skip further down a scrolled list? Just tap lower down on the touch bar. It's actually more practical in that sense. And with such a huge exposed bezel, the perfect place to put it. It's OK if someone prefers the digital crown, it's just a pretty big concession to make for the actual hardware for a device so starved for space.

For so many people complaining Apple Watch is not Round like traditional watches, nobody has complained about the Digital Crown.

The Crown is useful, familiar, and has absolutely no need for end user training: intuitive. Every device that’s used a dígital slider - HTC H20 Windows Phone for example has failed and never came out with a second iteration. So much to train with sensitivity of touch which varies from person to person, software glitches and hiccups (not hardware bound), and end user training on operation. Apple can do this but most likely will not due to the end user complexity it brings.

This years mechanism as well as the Haptic Engine remaining in size IS something to be appalled at!

Personally using the S3, is sense resistance when I scrolled beyond a scrolling point end so I see no reason for this “Digital” Digital Crown in the first place.

Eventually capacitive touch zones may show up as “digital buttons” in a future Appe Watch but not for a few years longer. Not something I’d want to have but hey most likely it’ll happen.

I disagree. See my comments above.

I don't think a digital "slider" on a phone makes much sense at all. But one on the side of the watch makes plenty of sense. Apple is already putting a scroll bar next to the digital crown, and the presence of one shows people where to scroll. It's not like they can't scroll by swiping the face anyway, the crown just makes it easier to see what you're scrolling through, whereas the phone screen is large enough not to matter. New technology makes the scroll bar far more useful than in the past, and various round watches use something similar on the circular bezel, which works perfectly well, and mimics the same features on a mechanical watch (rotating bezel), so it's intuitive without taking up a huge amount of internal space for a mechanical controller.

The ONLY reason to have digital crown is to enable scrolling in the water. But in that case, the wearer is going to have just as many problems touching anything and making it function. That's where Siri becomes a much more useful controller than anything mechanical or touch-based.

 

[newellj]

That's the problem. Surely there is a viable middle ground? Decent features and, say, 1 week battery life?

I haven't checked recently, but I think there are other smartwatches in that zone. But Apple is never going to be in that market segment. It's like the laptop line: full feature set, thin/light, and adequate but not great battery life. It's all trade-offs.

 

[Newbie67]

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.

How do you turn off auto tracking of workouts?

 

[nitramluap]

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)?

Of course not, but it's charged enough while I shower & get dressed to last the rest of the day just fine.

It can do a fully tracked workout for 6.5 hours non-stop but that's the battery's limit. I'd probably get more out of it in Workout Power Saving Mode but I've never tried. Might give it a go next time and see what the difference is.

My Garmin Forerunner 920XT would get 12 hours recording a workout before it conked out - but it ws no smart watch. Again, Garmin watches are great if you need more than 6 hours for a tracked/recorded workout or if you need to connect to many external sensors (ie. ANT+), particularly on a bike (power meter, cadence, etc).
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How do you turn off auto tracking of workouts?

On the Apple Watch:
Settings -> General -> Workouts

(you can do the same on the Apple Watch App on the iPhone)

 

[Abazigal]

They better have needed that space.

Otherwise it always struck as downright stupid to downgrade a battery when putting in more efficient electronics.

Why not go for the "24 hours battery life" ??

Probably because most users aren’t wearing their watches for 24 hours straight. They typically take it off to change overnight as they sleep, like their phones. In this regard, you don’t really miss what you don’t need.

 

[Regbial]

Apple once shipped a processor that was more power-efficient but didn't use less power?

From the website:

iPod touch features an Apple-designed A8 chip built on 64-bit architecture. This desktop-class chip features GPU performance up to 10 times faster than the previous-generation iPod touch — so the graphics in your favorite games are more responsive and look more vivid than ever before — and CPU performance is up to six times faster. And you get the same great battery life, with up to 40 hours of music and 8 hours of video playback.1

Lies. Much poorer and erratic battery life than the previous version. And it's not "once", they still sell the same iPod touch. Unless they updated the internals without telling anyone it should be the same thing as 2 years ago. Search forums, lots of complaints of the same thing.

 

[nitramluap]

All this complaining about the battery capacity reduction is interesting. How do we know what Apple defines as 'full' and 'empty' and how does this related in terms of mWh? It's possible that the *usable* battery capacity is the same in the 44/42mm comparison?

Perhaps the 42mm variants kept a little more capacity outside 0-100% as a safety margin, and maybe this has been able to be better managed with the new S4 chip in the Series 4? Who knows?

I'm glad that they've brought the smaller watch capacity up though.

 

[phpmaven]

Well then, if I hadn’T just broken my progressive/transition glasses and been informed I needed a new $700 pool part, I guess I’d be heading out to get one now - as I had originally planned before the battery issue showed up and I had a $1,000 worth of busted stuff dropped into my budget. :-(

Ok...

 

[Sathinator1]

The beancounters under Tim Cook are out of control at Apple. "Oh, the chip is 20 percent more efficient? Great, let's save some cash by reducing the battery size." This also helps to explain the continuing, and inexplicable, absence of an always-on display option. Sure, Apple sells many more watches than the competition, but this why I personally choose the competition over Apple as a result. When Apple adds always-on to the Apple Watch, then I'm back in. Having to keep raising and turning my wrist got old pretty quick.

 

[Fortimir]

Lower costs for whom?

You must have missed the word "hypothetical." I was merely saying in theory those cost savings could be passed to the consumer. Wasn't saying they would. Of course, over time all tech becomes less expensive because of these sort of things, and while those savings may not be directly passed down, they make room for newer tech without necessarily increasing overall unit pricing. In any case, it's a good thing whether now or later, indirect or direct.

And no, I wasn't remotely considering electricity costs.

They have the best selling watch in the world... doomed.... riiiiight.

If you didn't know that was sarcasm, you must be new here (although you've been here since 2010 so I have no idea). The phrase "Apple Is Doomed" has been a running joke for as long as I've been in the Apple scene. In fact, here's an article talking about how this meme has existed in one form or another since 1980.

 

[newellj]

I decided to see if running the Infograph Watch face with all its complications was affecting my battery life (which, to be fair, had come up close to what I remember getting from my S3). I switched back to the Activity Digital face, where I run only the date on the bottom and the battery level in the upper RH corner - neither of which should be running any processes or downloading any new data. I've only got a day of this experiment under my belt, but I think the Infograph faces really do, as you'd expect, take a toll on battery life.

 

[MactoDeath67]

Oh well, it’s worth it.

 

[MattNMiami]

Mine is great, all day use and still ending up with 65-75% charge at end of day. Whatever magic they are working is fine with me.

​

I upgraded from series 2 to series 4. The lowest I've seen it go in a week is about 55% at the end of the day. I think this 18hr statement is an underestimation. I haven't tried to go two days yet but it seems plausible. I also enjoy how this one is thinner. I don't see a problem here.

 

[dona83]

My first full day on a cellular S4 saw my battery life at 65% by bed time. This is my first Apple Watch so I can't compare to an older one but I've been pleased with the battery life and capabilities of this watch.

 

[Michael Goff]

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....

How is a smaller battery better for the planet?