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Battery Life Reports (38mm vs 42mm)

P

perspectivetech

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 30, 2014
7
8
Curious to get some live reports on battery life for both 38mm and 42mm watches. At the time of writing, we don't know the true difference between battery capacity, so thought we'd get some anecdotal thoughts!

Please remember to state your watch size!


Here's mine...

Watch Size: 38mm
Usage Time: 8.5 hours between 9AM to 5:30PM today
Battery Percent Remaining: 47%
Usage: Handful of iMessages with voice dictation response, fiddling with apps and glances, quick call on the speakerphone, 35 minute elliptical workout with heart rate tracking
 
That's about the same for me. I've had it off the charger since about 8am this morning. Same actions as you (30 min outdoor walk though) and I'm at 39% at 8:37 pm. 42 mm
 
Watch Size: 38mm
Usage Time: 11 hours between 10 AM and 9:00 PM today
Battery Percent Remaining: 66%
Usage: several messages with voice dictation response, lots of glances, weather apps, lots of checking activity, 30 minute walk on workout app, some remote camera shots
 
susan12369 said:
Watch Size: 38mm
Usage Time: 11 hours between 10 AM and 9:00 PM today
Battery Percent Remaining: 66%
Usage: several messages with voice dictation response, lots of glances, weather apps, lots of checking activity, 30 minute walk on workout app, some remote camera shots
Click to expand...
11 hours usage? What was your standby?
 
tknice said:
11 hours usage? What was your standby?
Click to expand...

So I'm at about 11 hours usage for today, and my battery is at 65%. According to the app, my usage was 1 hour 25 minutes, and standby was 11 hours 7 minutes (not sure how that is since it was about 11 hours ago that I took it off the charger and put it on).
 
I have a 38mm.

No official workouts yesterday and I ended the day with 35% or so. I went to the gym and then for a walk and definitely can see how that drained my watch more.
 
42mm Sport here

The last 2 days I've had the watch on for over 12 hours a day and it's been at well over 50% left when placing it on the charger for the night
 
I'm not getting near the battery life others are reporting. I have the 38mm sport.

Yesterday I wore it for about 12 hours, 8am till about 8pm when I put it on the charger because it hit 8% battery life. No exercising, just shopping, used it a few places for apple pay, fiddled with the settings, texted back and forth with my husband. Before I put it on the charger, I set the haptics, sounds and brightness lower, to try and save battery life.

Today, I put it on at 8, took it off again about 10am and spent 5 hours in the pool while it sat on a table. Put it on, took a 2 hour nap. I've gotten a couple of notifications on it, but nothing else. 60% with very little use. Since I started typing this out, over the course of about 7 mins, its dropped 3% from checking stats. Its telling me its been about 9 and half hours since the last charge with 2 hours use.

I wish we could see what was using the battery like you can on the phone, perhaps I have a power hungry app, or perhaps a dud battery, but there's no good way to tell.
 
38 Blue Sport, Today:

Took off charger at 8:45am.

Dropped the kid off at Sunday school.

Cleaned the house for 90 mins (took a few quick calls on the watch).

Walked the dog for 1 hour with activity app enabled and tracking.

Got home and sat on the couch for a few mins. The watch tells me to get up! Come on watch, I just walked for an hour.

Took the other kid to the play ground and pushed her on the swing for an hour. I wonder what the watch thought of that motion? Answered a bunch of questions from another Dad about the Watch who noticed it.

Went to Whole Foods and used the watch to pay.

Throughout the day used the watch to ... tell time, look at incoming messages, briefly looked at twitter and instagram, set a few reminders, convert C to F because our stupid thermostat thinks we're in Canada, took a few more quick calls (easier than trying to hold the phone while carrying grocery bags!)

TL;DR: I used the watch like I assume I would every day and i'm at 29% getting ready for Game Of Thrones. I call that a full day battery life for sure.
 

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Have yet to see the watch below 30% after 3 full days of real world usage (workouts, Apple Pay, iMessage, etc).

42mm Sport.
 
The first day I had it on for about 14 hours and ended with 68%. Not sure what the standby was.

Today I've got 1 hr, 58 min usage + 12 hrs, 49 min standby and 63% left.

I have a 38mm.
 
This thread is super fun because I love reading how people used their watches throughout the day and what kind of battery they had left. But unfortunately, we'll never be able to tell from general reports like this. I suspect the battery improvement on the 42mm is in the neighborhood of 5% or less.
 
38mm sport:

1 hr, 57 min usage - voice texts, message notifications
14 hr, 7 min standby
48% battery left
 
42mm SS space gray.

On Saturday (the day after I received it) I started off at 10am with 100% battery, had about 3 minutes of phone calls in total, a fair bit of text messaging and a lot of app usage (Pulse VIC to track tram arrival times in Melbourne, NY Times, Le Monde, Flipboard and Instagram), and also letting my friends play with it for half an hour.

It went down to 3% at 11pm. Not too bad considering its usage.

I'll post back after monitoring its usage for today (Monday 27/4).
 
I came close to exhausting the battery Friday night after receiving Apple Watch and using it a lot. Out of the box, though, it was about 75% charged.

Since then, I haven't come anywhere near 0%, in fact upwards of 40% left.

Very happy with the battery.

Only complaint is this pesky problem when passcode is on, and it gradually began asking me to type my passcode in every time. Wrist-detection software bug, is what I have to chalk it up to.
 
The first day battery went into power reserve in about 8 hours because I was using the workout app for 3 hours at the gym and messing with the watch all day. Today I woke up at 8am and put on my watch. I sent out about 30 texts using Siri, checked emails, controlled my hue lights, tested out the maps navigation, listened to music while shopping at grocery store, viewed bunch of other notifications and played with some apps. It's now 10:48 and battery is at 33%. So that's about 15 hours of regular use here and there. I have my screen set on the brightest setting and my haptic feedback is set to max. If I use it this way I can probably get it to work for 18-20 hours which is more than enough for me. So far I, pleased with the battery.

I have the 38 mm SS
 

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On Friday, the watch came with about 67% of battery. I was playing with it all day and by the time I left the gym, it had about 10% left (it asked me if I wanted to switch to Power Reserve mode). I felt worried it would be like this going forward, but since then, the watch could be on my wrist 14 hours and no problem. Everyone plays with the watch constantly on the first day and I cannot live with my watch now :D
 
My battery on my 42MM SS watch has been pretty great so far. Today I put my watch on at 8:30am today, and it is 9:15pm now and has 29% left.

Usage: 3 hours 24 minutes
Standby: 12 hours 49 minutes

Used it pretty normally. Checked all notifications all day, went for a 2 hour outdoor run (using the workout app), and played with my watch (obviously because its new)

I am super stoked that the battery is lasting through a typical weekend day for me. :):):)
 
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