Apple Watch Ultra Will Get Up to 60 Hours of Battery Life With Software Update Later This Year

[_Spinn_]

Happy to finally see an Apple Watch that can go longer than on day on a charge.

 

[Uofmtiger]

I think that’s the market. Why buy a watch for 2 days worth of recreation. People will do that though for those 2 days. The Ultra means they don’t have to.

I’m usually at 50% after 18 hours on my AW4 and never get a warning, which made me wonder if I needed an upgrade. I decided I do! (SS model 8)


Sounds like other than the battery, they’re identical! 😂

You are lucky to have that much power left in your AW4. Pretty much every weekend, where I get up early and stay up late, I am getting the power warning. I have had some weird issues going on with it, too. Like it occasionally won’t allow me to scroll up for notifications or one of the things on my screen is missing. I swim with mine on quite a bit, so maybe the water does something to it? No idea, but if am looking forward to the extra battery.

 

[gtg465x]

It should be stainless steel, titanium scratches while stainless steel doesn’t

Would be too heavy. It’s already way heavier than the stainless 45 mm.

 

[gtg465x]

Again with the "software updates" in the future, whenever that is, that will magically fix everything. No thanks, either way, 60 hours is not enough if you're serious about adventuring in the manner they tried to pitch it to us.

How serious are we talking? Because I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro this summer, which was 7 days of camping and hiking with extreme elevation and temperatures, and was able to track everything with my Series 7. I did turn off the always on display to save battery, but I was able to use a portable battery to charge it every night. I imagine with the Ultra, I wouldn’t even have needed to turn off always on display, and I might could have only charged every other day. My dad had a Fenix 7X, and he didn’t have to charge his watch, but he still had to carry a portable battery to charge his phone, so the battery life of his watch wasn’t exactly a huge advantage for him, and he didn’t even record GPS tracks on his like I did.

 

[Appleuser823]

People are fooled once again. Do they mistake 60 HOURS for 60 Days? 60 hours is not long if on an adventure… but Garmin and you have 60 DAYS of battery.

 

[gtg465x]

It's double the battery life of a regular watch, along with the nicer case and bigger screen it's not a bad deal. Especially once the low power mode comes along later this year and brings it to 60 hours.

Have to also keep in mind that Apple's battery estimates are based on their use test. My Series 6 (with "18 hours" of battery life) will regularly go for just under 2 days without charging if I'm only using it for notifications.

Just to clarify, the display on the Ultra is not noticeably larger than the display on the 45 mm Series 7 and 8. The watch itself is much larger, but the display, not so much… only 1.8% larger (1164 vs 1143 sq mm). You can tell that the displays are almost the same size by looking at this to scale comparison:

 

[jons]

Made up my mind after the announcement. I’m upgrading my Fenix 6 Sapphire for the Fenix 7 Solar Sapphire.

Had my 7 Sapphire Solar for 10 days so far and haven’t had to plug it in one time. Been wearing it 24/7 with all sensors on. Came from an AW 7 Stainless. Loving it so far. For endurance athletes and those who need a robust navigation device I don’t see how it can be beat.

 

[MetalMatt24]

Ordered!

 

[Brien]

We all know the majority of people who buy this, the farthest they'll go is to the mall, their back yard or to the gas station. For people who need more the Apple Watch Ultra is likely never at the top of their list. But Apple has certainly carved out a lucrative space that will only keep growing. I can see the college guys and girls in my neighborhood walking around wearing it.

I wonder how many will buy it for having the biggest screen vs. “most expensive”, though.

 

[Mr. Dee]

I wonder how many will buy it for having the biggest screen vs. “most expensive”, though.

A whole lotta people, I know it’s a major part of my reason when upgrade to rev 2 next year. Because it’s a first gen of a new category, I want the early adopters to work out the kinks first before I upgrade from my Series 3.

 

[bigandtasty]

Good reason to WAIT….. why buy for features that you’ll eventually get.

still waiting on adding my driver’s license to my phone, a feature announced a year ago…

best part of the keynote was that lady wearing the human urine popsicle outfit!
soo entertaining 😂

 

[duffman9000]

For those people saying 36 hours is not enough for their extremely awesome adventure Amazon trip they are doing every weekend, do you guys not charge your phone while out there? Are you guys so hardcore that you just don't bring phone, external battery, etc. Just your watch? I don't understand. Why can't you just charge at night, while pooping, eating, or doing something that you don't actively have to use the watch? I mean, out of 36 hours, there must be tens of minutes that would allow you to charge your watch.

If you thought people would bring things called portable batteries you are gravely mistaken. People take their watch, canteen, and Rambo knife.

 

[TheMountainLife]

I hope I'm wrong but realistically I'm thinking its 60 hours of idle time and just checking the time occasionally. Once you add in extreme temps and the use of different sensors/services in standalone mode, you're looking at half of the hours promised.

 

[paradox00]

I hope I'm wrong but realistically I'm thinking its 60 hours of idle time and just checking the time occasionally. Once you add in extreme temps and the use of different sensors/services in standalone mode, you're looking at half of the hours promised.

The 60 hours included 15 hours of workout. It's right in the article...

 

[TheMountainLife]

The 60 hours included 15 hours of workout. It's right in the article...

I should have emphasized temperature more. Indoor workout? Sure. With extreme highs and extreme lows that its marketing to be? Hard to believe until we see it put to the test. Either way I'm sure it would pass my desire to snowboard all day in standalone while playing music from Spotify and keeping my party up to date on where I am on the mountain with Find My.

 

[steve09090]

Good reason to WAIT….. why buy for features that you’ll eventually get.

Because it was a feature announced at launch and I can't think of a single time they have done that and not delivered.

still waiting on adding my driver’s license to my phone, a feature announced a year ago…

Driver's Licences are up to the states to provide. In Australia some states have it and some don't. I can imagine that is something that happens in US as well. If that's the case, how is that Apple's fault?

best part of the keynote was that lady wearing the human urine popsicle outfit!
soo entertaining 😂

Yeah, that's a ****** thing to say, but well... never mind.

I hope I'm wrong but realistically I'm thinking its 60 hours of idle time and just checking the time occasionally. Once you add in extreme temps and the use of different sensors/services in standalone mode, you're looking at half of the hours promised.

Most times, Apple underpromises and over-delivers with battery estimates.

 

[svish]

The longer battery life is very welcome.

 

[dave070]

60 hours is still pretty weaksauce. Especially for the purpose of this outdoor adventuring device.

If your watch was critical, you could likely carry a small portable battery. Wouldn't take much to charge this an additional 3-4 times and last over a week.

 

[dave070]

This might be the one to get. I have a Series 2 right now and it's dead by 2-3pm from fully charged at 8am.

I think a upgrade would be worth it but if you had to keep what you had, a simply battery replacement would help. The battery in yours is clearly done.

 

[xDKP]

That's 87,540 fewer hours-per-charge than my Casio F91.

Yeah and my shoes last a lot longer than my Tesla on a charge - still not even close to be a good comparison

 

[MacGekko]

Yes, its an insane amount of battery. This is a device that can be a phone, a texting device, a fall monitor that asks if it should call for help, a map, a music device, many health functions, many exercise recording abilities, able to display pictures from my phone, control the camera of an iPhone to remotely take a picture or video, so you can then view that picture or video on the watch that you can't see because you can't safely get close enough and at the right angle to see what is happening (I've used this on my job, setting up the phones camera in a machine where I can't get and being able to take a picture or a movie so I can see what is going on behind a guard that can't be removed without tripping a safety circuit). Its also a simple timer, which I use for feeding my dog who has EPI so I need to spread medicine on her food for 15 minutes before I can let her eat. I can tell my phone to make a sound when I don't know where I placed it but I know its near, and I can find friends that I am sharing location with so I can see where they are in relation to where I am. What device do you know of that is 45 mm tall by 39 mm wide by 13 mm thick (a little over 1/2 inch) device that I can have multiple time faces for including pictures that I have of family/friends and dogs? And remember the 13 mm thickness (on my series 4) not only includes the thickness of the battery but also the screen and the glass face of the watch. By itself the battery isn't that thick.

If you know how to make a battery approximately that small with the ability for heavy use for a time significantly longer than 60 hours, what are you waiting for? The person who figures that one out will be the first multi-trillionaire.

You do all of those things you will be lucky to get 15 hours off the Ultra, those extreme explorers in the Apple promo video, this watch would not last for any of them, and it is still a joke that Apple won't take the Iphone shackles off the Watch, make the damn thing fully independent, God they have to exploit every dollar out of its customers.

 

[Richu]

Not impressive for a workout watch. I mean an ultra marathon can last 48 hours and these estimates are with 1 hour workouts per charge.

The apple watch, while advanced, has some poor design choices for serious long workouts. Mainly capacitive touch and the high quality display. It drains battery, is useless with sweaty hands and requires eye contact to press the correct button.

Sure they’ve added one physical button (huge innovation?) but that’s still quite limited. And doesn’t stop the battery drain.

 

[MacGekko]

I know you only need a regular watch. I only have a series 4 myself. It's the battery life claim that I am pointing out. By this reasoning we ought to already have EV's that can travel 1000-1500 miles on a single charge and only take 5 minutes to recharge. Which we don't, but its not like a lot of big automakers wouldn't like to. If it was that easy then someone would be doing it now. Or if the technology is that simple, they would have done it years ago.

If not for Tesla, and the political funding, the big automakers would have still been dragging their heels on the EV front, I wish Apple would stop dragging their heels on making this Watch fully independent of the Iphone, Steve Jobs liked money too, but I think he would have brought Apple in a more daring direction than Tim Cook's brain might only daydream about.

 

[MacGekko]

Not impressive for a workout watch. I mean an ultra marathon can last 48 hours and these estimates are with 1 hour workouts per charge.

The apple watch, while advanced, has some poor design choices for serious long workouts. Mainly capacitive touch and the high quality display. It drains battery, is useless with sweaty hands and requires eye contact to press the correct button.

Sure they’ve added one physical button (huge innovation?) but that’s still quite limited. And doesn’t stop the battery drain.

The explorer marketing BS is just that, a bunch of BS hype, the battery life can't support the athletes in the promo, it is not made for them at all, but whatever, stock price will rise as usual, and so it goes.

 

[Helmlein]

I imagine a lot of people will buy this model just for the extended battery life

Just done that for exactly this reason. Additionally, until now if I wanted the sapphire glass, I could only buy the stainless steel watches. Those are in the same price range as the Ultra, therefore it was a pleasant surprise to see that the Ultra watches aren't priced at over 1000 USD/EUR.

Strangely though, the delivery times varied greatly when I ordered yesterday, depending on the selection of the WRIST BAND! One of them was "available on Sept 23", and another one "in 6 to 7 weeks". Who cares that much about the bands to justify the additional 3w wait?

H.