I haven't found the battery life to be an issue. Part of that is how quick the Apple Watch is to charge. I throw it on the charger when I wake up, and it's charged by the time I get out of the shower.

Exactly this. At some point I stopped being a nightly charger for all my Apple devices and find more convenient times to charge. Sort of lazy, but I would rather have my phone within reach while I'm sleeping and plug it in when I can't use it (shower, out running with my watch). Same goes with the Watch. More useful to be with me while sleeping.

This. Getting something like the Belkin 3-in-1 Wireless Charger with MagSafe at work has been a lifesaver. I get to work, throw on my phone, watch, and AirPods, and within an hour everything's charged back up. Having a few charging pucks around the house also helps.

I like wearing my watch at night for sleep tracking, and the longer it's on my wrist, the more data it's capturing, which my hope is that in the years to come, can be harnessed for improving my health, somehow.

Can you name those competitors? For example a Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 lasts a day or a bit more. Nowhere near the 90 hours mark.

I use the Garmin solar instinct. It lasts 30-40 days on a charge. If it doesn't get any sun (winter months), its ~22 days on a charge.

Sure but how is that a competitor for an apple watch? At least a competitor to me would have to be able to run the equivalent of Fantastical and Omnifocus.

> Sure but how is that a competitor for an apple watch?

Hopefully you understand that watches can still be competitors in the smartwatch space even if they don't have feature parity?

Absolutely, though in terms of battery life I find it quite odd to compare a barebone watch like the Garmin to apple or samsung watches. I am not surprised that a casio watch has a better battery life either.

Pebble Time Steel can last up to 12 days, with the screen always on.

Pebble is so good that I still keep 2 extra ones in their unopened boxes, for the day my current one fails.

Garmin can easily last a week or two.

Sure but how many of those are actually comptition for Samsung Galaxy watches or Apple Watches? I have a Fenix 5 but wouldn't consider that to be competition for an Apple watch due to the terrible display and lack of apps. Easy to get a weeks worth of battery if the device doesn't run anything.

Competitor as a fitness watch? Definitely. For my use case neither galaxy watch or apple watch clarify as a anything but a glorified kid toy.

I felt that a battery that lasts one day is better than one that lasts something like 6 days. It is easy enough to remember to charge at night. Yes, one can’t use sleep features, but I am ok with that.

When you are in apple ecosystem, unlock phone with watch, unlock Mac with watch, accept Okta verify (2FA) on watch without an unlock, etc are life changing things for me.

What sucks is that I can’t gift it an Android/PC person without replacing thousands worth of everything else.

I have a Garmin watch and I just charge it while I'm taking a shower. Easy to remember, and I've had it for a few years and it's never run out of battery.

That's what I do with my Apple Watch, too. I wear it 24x7 excepting my daily shower.

Yes but what if you take a shower every days ?

The amount of coping is strong in this post.

I don't understand why I need to wear my watch 24 hours a day. I wake up, put it on and wear it until I go to bed. While it is charging it is my nightstand clock.

Other than the nightstand clock thing, this is how I wear my "real" watches too.

Because sleep tracking and an alarm that doesn’t disturb your partner are two of the best features.

I have a different sleep tracker and me and my partner use a wake light, so I don't find these things relevant to my use case. A quick poll of my friends is similar, although one uses the sleep tracker and charges while getting ready in the morning.

The Garmin watches have Pulse Oximeters in them that tell your your 02 saturation while you sleep, breaths per minutes, and use that data to calculate all sorts of metrics for you.

Yes, but the Apple Watch will compile the Linux kernel twice as fast as those other watches.

Seriously though, my Apple Watch is definitely the one device that runs out of battery the most in my life. I would love more battery life, so long as it doesn’t compromise any of the functionality or design. But there’s the rub.

I've recently been wondering if it would be technically feasible to make one of those more traditional metal watchbands, where the metal elements would be Li-Batteries. Perhaps too small though.

I think the tricky part would be the linkages where you'd need an electrical connection. Making that robust enough to be in the band but not too bulky would be a serious challenge. You'd also lose the big variety of bands and the sweet profit margins that they bring.

I don't know if there's been a regression since the series4, but my Apple watch easily lasts 30-36h (maybe I'm just too sedentary these days with WFH + occasional ride).

Even on busy weekends where I'm out all day with multiple "workouts" it usually lasts the day fine.

Usually people charge them during showers. It charges quite quickly. The watch part is additional as funny as it sounds.

I think because most people don’t need it more than 18 hours per day? If you’re taking it off at night, you might as well drop it on the charger.

Actually one of the best features of the apple watch is that it can wake me silently (so as not to wake my spouse) and I can adjust my alarm schedule on my phone (without digging through tiny menus, which are even worse on a Garmin).

So I have developed a habit of taking off my apple watch when I sit at my desk. By the first time I think to look at my wrist, it's charged.

I put it in sleep mode all night, and wake up with plenty of battery anyway.

It takes about an hour to charge, so I just schedule the same time every day to charge it (after I get home from work, while I eat dinner).

Sure it's one more thing to manage, but having it wake me up with vibrate every morning is worth the small hassle.

You may be using it for more than 18 hours per day if you're trying to sleep track

Fortunately it doesn't take 6 hours to charge! I'm still not sure where the 18 hour number comes from, I use mine for close to 24 reliably. About 1 hour charging every morning while I'm at my desk not doing much physically anyways is all it takes. Before the WFH times I'd charge it in the morning after it woke me up and maybe in the evening if the charge was below 30% so I'd be certain it would get through the night.

In that case you could probably get away with just charging it for a bit in the evening and a top up in the morning while you get ready and be able to wear it basically all day. It's supposedly 90 minutes to 80% from zero and that should get you to the evening where it'd be good to unplug and unwind for a little bit anyways.

Especially when I'm traveling (normally), an additional thing to charge is just more overhead. I have an older Apple Watch and I just don't use it very much. When I do, it's for hikes and, barring major upgrades, I probably won't upgrade and may get a new Garmin at some point.

The 18 hour battery life is the price you pay for at least 5x the functionality of competitors with better battery life (somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but you do realize the reason other wearables can get away with much longer battery lives is that they are capable of far less).

I love the features, and I charge it every night (with 50% spare as well).