Series 6 Should Be Using The New Battery Design From 40mm Series 5

[G.McGilli]

Was it ever figured out why the 40mm S5 had a battery with 10% more power/capacity using the new metal container and the S4 44mm used the same old foil-wrapped battery that was only 1% larger than the previous generation?

You'd think the 44mm should have had a much larger battery capacity after seeing what Apple did with the 40mm...

Regardless, Series 6 should be using this new type of battery I'm sure for extra capacity. And if any other components have been shrunk down, hopefully, the battery is even larger - in both sizes!

For anyone who's not familiar with this:

The 40mm Apple Watch Series 5 Has a Radical New Battery Design

We tore down the new 44mm Apple Watch and only saw minor changes, but we tore down the 40mm model and noticed a big change not present on the larger model.

www.ifixit.com

And Step 4 here:

Apple Watch Series 5 Teardown

What’s new in the Apple Watch Series 5? It looks like a Series 4, it feels like Series 4, it ticks like a Series 4. Let’s find out why there’s a...

www.ifixit.com

 

[Benz63amg]

Was it ever figured out why the 40mm S5 had a battery with 10% more power/capacity using the new metal container and the S4 44mm used the same old foil-wrapped battery that was only 1% larger than the previous generation?

You'd think the 44mm should have had a much larger battery capacity after seeing what Apple did with the 40mm...

Regardless, Series 6 should be using this new type of battery I'm sure for extra capacity. And if any other components have been shrunk down, hopefully, the battery is even larger - in both sizes!

For anyone who's not familiar with this:

The 40mm Apple Watch Series 5 Has a Radical New Battery Design

We tore down the new 44mm Apple Watch and only saw minor changes, but we tore down the 40mm model and noticed a big change not present on the larger model.

www.ifixit.com

And Step 4 here:

Apple Watch Series 5 Teardown

What’s new in the Apple Watch Series 5? It looks like a Series 4, it feels like Series 4, it ticks like a Series 4. Let’s find out why there’s a...

www.ifixit.com

there should be a solar charger ofsome sort in the series 6 that trickle charges it in the sun or perhaps some system that charges the watch when you walk in the street. The current battery tech of 2 days tops on the series 4 on a good day (with no workout use etc) is unacceptable. Imagine if the battery on the watch lasted for a week or a month? That would be pretty awesome

 

[G.McGilli]

If the S5 44m had the 10% increase in battery like the smaller version that would have been great - my current S5 already does pretty well - but I don't use it for workout tracking - just communicating a few hours a day on and off cellular:

Still had a few hours left in the battery at this point but could always be better 🤣

 

[DontGetTheCheese]

there should be a solar charger ofsome sort in the series 6 that trickle charges it in the sun or perhaps some system that charges the watch when you walk in the street. The current battery tech of 2 days tops on the series 4 on a good day (with no workout use etc) is unacceptable. Imagine if the battery on the watch lasted for a week or a month? That would be pretty awesome

The S5 doesn't even come close to 2-days, I've gone into low power mode at less than 1-1/2 days with no music or long workouts.

I have a Fenix Solar, and solar, at least Garmin's version, isn't as useful as you might think. The primary problem is that the kind of exposure that makes a difference (3 hours/day) is hard to achieve unless you are running ultra's or outside a lot. I know in my case I have days, weeks even, where it got almost no sunlight: winter, long sleeves, running after work when it was dark.

Now with Covid, I'm not even outside much, except maybe an hour/day for a workout. I did notice it picked up sunlight through the window, which surprised me.

And, even at full bore, 3 hours/day, that's only about 14% additional battery life, per Garmin's marketing. The math on that would potentially be different on an AW, but frankly the battery life of an AW needs to at least double, preferably triple. It needs a better battery and a better approach, things I don't expect to see.

 

[Benz63amg]

The S5 doesn't even come close to 2-days, I've gone into low power mode at less than 1-1/2 days with no music or long workouts.

I have a Fenix Solar, and solar, at least Garmin's version, isn't as useful as you might think. The primary problem is that the kind of exposure that makes a difference (3 hours/day) is hard to achieve unless you are running ultra's or outside a lot. I know in my case I have days, weeks even, where it got almost no sunlight: winter, long sleeves, running after work when it was dark.

Now with Covid, I'm not even outside much, except maybe an hour/day for a workout. I did notice it picked up sunlight through the window, which surprised me.

And, even at full bore, 3 hours/day, that's only about 14% additional battery life, per Garmin's marketing. The math on that would potentially be different on an AW, but frankly the battery life of an AW needs to at least double, preferably triple. It needs a better battery and a better approach, things I don't expect to see.

So if solar doesn’t work, then how could Apple improve battery tech on the next GEn AW?

 

[DontGetTheCheese]

So if solar doesn’t work, then how could Apple improve battery tech on the next GEn AW?

Yeah, it's a problem given the AW limitations (form factor, battery tech, screen and smarts). But, hey, I just complain about things, someone else needs to fix them.

I just don't think solar offers enough kick to be a difference maker but maybe the tech will get better than what Garmin did over time.

 

[Benz63amg]

Yeah, it's a problem given the AW limitations (form factor, battery tech, screen and smarts). But, hey, I just complain about things, someone else needs to fix them.

I just don't think solar offers enough kick to be a difference maker but maybe the tech will get better than what Garmin did over time.

how about some sort of a kinetic charger that charges the AW as you WALK during the day? Or at least trickle charges it. it sounds far fetched but that would be amazing. is that even possible to make?

 

[G.McGilli]

how about some sort of a kinetic charger that charges some sort of a component as you WALK during the day and in return charges the watch? it sounds far fetched but that would be amazing. is that even possible to make?

That would keep AW users active 🤣

 

[DontGetTheCheese]

how about some sort of a kinetic charger that charges the AW as you WALK during the day? Or at least trickle charges it. it sounds far fetched but that would be amazing. is that even possible to make?

It seems like I had that at some point in my life. I know I had a Citizen ECO that ran forever off sunlight so I might be conflating the two.

I checked just now and it looks like Kinetic watches are a real thing. No idea how much power they generate or if it would be nearly enough to power a watch like this. It would lead to some weird behaviors for certain.

 

[G.McGilli]

I have a Seiko that recharges the battery with the rotor inside. So, it's like a mechanical watch, but instead of winding springs, it charges the battery... Citizen watches have the solar charging face on some of them...

Not expecting anything like this is AW but - tech's getting cooler all the time!

 

[igrover]

Yes would love to see something like the Rolex automatic mechanism incorporated into an Apple Watch that would provide power to "top up" the watch's battery.

 

[QCassidy352]

I didn't know that about the 40mm S5 (which is what I have) battery design - pretty cool.

I like both the solar option and the kinetic option, not to replace dedicated charging, but to provide a little boost to battery life. Or would the space needed for those components just be better spent on a larger battery? I don't know.

For my uses, the current battery life is actually fine. I always make it to bedtime with at least 10-20% left, even if I worked out using GPS and streamed music without my phone. But, I bet a full marathon would just about kill it, and no way on an ultra.

 

[Benz63amg]

I didn't know that about the 40mm S5 (which is what I have) battery design - pretty cool.

I like both the solar option and the kinetic option, not to replace dedicated charging, but to provide a little boost to battery life. Or would the space needed for those components just be better spent on a larger battery? I don't know.

For my uses, the current battery life is actually fine. I always make it to bedtime with at least 10-20% left, even if I worked out using GPS and streamed music without my phone. But, I bet a full marathon would just about kill it, and no way on an ultra.

How is it fine for a watch battery to die in 2 days? Come on man. its not fine, its fine because of current day technology. But mechanical watches can stay on for weeks, Sure, They don't have electronic parts such as a display but still a watch should not die after 1 1/2 -2 days of charge. I think the kinetic option would be an amazing feature but i dont think if apple would pursue it. Also, if you use Sleep tracking with the watch the battery life of current apple watches is less than ideal.

 

[cambookpro]

I didn't know that about the 40mm S5 (which is what I have) battery design - pretty cool.

I like both the solar option and the kinetic option, not to replace dedicated charging, but to provide a little boost to battery life. Or would the space needed for those components just be better spent on a larger battery? I don't know.

For my uses, the current battery life is actually fine. I always make it to bedtime with at least 10-20% left, even if I worked out using GPS and streamed music without my phone. But, I bet a full marathon would just about kill it, and no way on an ultra.

How is it fine for a watch battery to die in 2 days? Come on man. its not fine, its fine because of current day technology. But mechanical watches can stay on for weeks, Sure, They don't have electronic parts such as a display but still a watch should not die after 1 1/2 -2 days of charge. I think the kinetic option would be an amazing feature but i dont think if apple would pursue it. Also, if you use Sleep tracking with the watch the battery life of current apple watches is less than ideal.

These are really mini iPhones, not advanced watches. It's really difficult to compare the amount of power required for a traditional mechanical watch vs a smart watch with a super bright, high PPI screen, heart rate monitor, vibration motors, WiFi and Bluetooth, etc. Someone did some back of a fag packet calculations and estimated that if an Apple Watch were to be charged kinetically, it would take roughly 100 hours of walking for 1 hour of charging, and that's assuming fairly high efficiency.

It's been tried in the past, for example the Sequent smartwatch which promised infinite battery life via kinetic movement. However, that had no screen, you had to manually enable heart rate monitoring, and generally wasn't very accurate. And the kinetic mechanism made a really loud noise when moving. Even then, it still had to be charged often by a traditional mains charger.

Solar panels face similar problems. Even though Apple has a patent for solar panels in the touchscreen layer, current solar technology is nowhere near efficient enough. I had a solar charging Casio watch which was great, but even that needed occasional topups by the window to maintain enough power.

I'm no engineer, but I highly doubt the space required for these charging methods would be worth it opposed to just putting a bigger battery in the watch. Unless there is a truly amazing breakthrough in battery technology and/or miniaturisation, I don't think we will see a smartwatch with week- or month-long battery life.

 

[waw74]

kinetic
what I've found is a kinetic watch charger puts out 1.5microamp, Series 5 Apple Watch holds 245/296 milliamp hours. (2 numbers for 40/44mm)
so the 44mm Series 5 battery would take about 22 years to fill with vigorous arm moment.

The article stated, it would take 2 days to fully charge the watch's capicator, and that would last for about 7 days.
quick math shows, it draws about .5microamp hours
meaning the 44mm Apple Watch battery could power the "dumb watch" for about 67 years on a single charge assuming 100% efficiency.

1 milliamp = 1,000 microamps.


Solar
is a little more feasible, but not really.
I found a panel, it's about twice the area of the Series 5 44mm watch screen
It is from an electronic hobby store, Apple would have access to better/more efficient, but not a whole lot.
it outputs 200mA at 1volt
back to our 44mm watch - 296mA at 3.85v.
at 100% efficiency in the charging circuit, it would take about 6 hours to fully charge the battery.
Best case right now we're 80% efficiency, so add another hour to that.

So for solar to work.
you need to have a watch, the equivalent size of 3 watches, and have that sitting in direct sunlight for about 7 hours.
If your watch battery typically lasts about a day and a half, you can cheat a bit and only need about 5 hours per day.

you can't wrap it around the band, because most of it would be in the shadow, So it all has to be on top of your arm, and in direct sunlight.

another option is the goal zero nomad 5,
it's 9.5" x 7" (24 x 17.8cm) and in full sun has the same output as the standard watch charger's input (5v @ 5w or 1a)
so that big panel would only take one to 2 hours of direct sun to charge the watch. (based on how long mine usually takes)

 

[G.McGilli]

How is it fine for a watch battery to die in 2 days? Come on man.

It's fine for me since I don't think of it as a watch. I think of it as a computer with all it's able to do - and then with it being that small, I'm not disappointed...

Sure, I wish it lasted longer but considering I grew up when every phone had a cord and a rotary dial it's all a bonus now 🤣