Yesterday’s Apple Watch announcement made a big splash, but Apple was mum on details such as specifications and battery life.
According to well-connected John Paczkowski from Re/code, sources tell them the watch’s battery life is roughly at a day right now, and the company is tweaking the device still to improve it ahead of the ‘early 2015’ launch:
Sources tell me that Apple isn’t yet happy with the watch’s battery life, which isn’t going to break any industry standards. “It’s about a day right now,” said one, adding that Apple is working on various modifications ahead of the device’s 2015 launch to improve it.
Apple responded to the story and did not provide an estimate on battery life, but did mention it expects Apple Watch users to charge the device nightly, which is why they created the easy MagSafe-like charging setup. According to spokeswoman Nat Kerris:
“There’s a lot of new technology packed into Apple Watch and we think people will love using it throughout the day,” Kerris said. “We anticipate that people will charge nightly which is why we designed an innovative charging solution that combines our MagSafe technology and inductive charging.”
Last week, it was rumoured that Apple employees had set low expectations on the device’s battery life.
Everyone always wants better battery life. How much can we really squeeze out of tiny smart watches with Retina displays with small batteries?
Unless you have a Pebble which has an e-ink display and limited functionality, I don’t expect an Apple Watch to last more than a day given how much we will be using the device. It would have been neat if the watch had some sort of kinetic regeneration built in, similar to what we’ve seen with Seiko watches–but that takes up way too much space.
