As with all smartphone devices and watches, one of the concerns about the Apple Watch is its battery life. Naturally, as we use these gadgets to get information, to schedule our lives, and to perform daily tasks, devices with a poor battery lives are a huge deal breaker for us.
The Apple Watch’s Battery Life
One week after the Apple Watch launched in Singapore, we are happy to share that we are quite satisfied with the Apple Watch’s performance. We have yet to experience a day where we managed to drain the Apple Watch’s battery. According to Apple, the Watch can last 18 hours per day at the following usage level: 90 time checks, 90 notifications, 45 minutes of app use, and a 30-minute workout with music playback from the Apple Watch via Bluetooth.
Granted, you would have to charge the watch at the end of the day for a minimum of 2 hours so that you have a fully charged Apple Watch the following day. But otherwise, we are pretty satisfied with the Apple Watch’s battery life.
If battery life is something that concerns you, you should be relieved to know that there is a special low power mode that kicks in if your battery power has fallen to a critical level. At times like this, the Apple Watch automatically switches into Power Reserve mode, so you can continue to check the time for an additional few hours.
The iPhone 6’s Battery Life
As many of you might know, the Apple Watch syncs to your iPhone via Bluetooth for it to receive notifications. What this means is that your iPhone’s Bluetooth must be switched on the whole time, putting additional strain on its battery. That said, we haven’t been affected by this too much since we have been working from the office, and do not use apps that are known to drain battery.
If you actively customise your Apple Watch notifications, and have moved some notification actions from your iPhone to your Watch, you might notice that your iPhone 6 lasts longer on a single charge. This is because you can easily check those notifications on your Apple Watch and dismiss them, rather than loading the notifications on your iPhone.
As an example: since we enable email push notifications and chat notifications on our Watch, we no longer have to manage them on our iPhone every time we receive alerts (unless we need to reply to them). As a result, the actions undertaken by the iPhone is offloaded onto the Apple Watch, saving it battery and lessening the strain imposed on it by the constant Bluetooth connectivity.
Apple Watch Battery Life Tips And Tricks
Much has been written on how to improve and better utilise your Apple Watch’s battery, and here are some of the few tips that worked for us.
First, customise the Notifications and Glances that you actually need on your Apple Watch. Remove those that do not have any use, or those that you can interact with on your iPhone. Second, turn off automatic downloads on the Apple Watch iPhone app. This is labelled as “Automatic Downloads” under “My Watch”. Finally, choose the most minimalist Apple Watch face. Some — like the flowers and jellyfish, which are in constant motion — are known to drain more battery life than others, and can put a strain on your Apple Watch’s battery life.
So there’s really nothing to worry about regarding the Apple Watch’s battery life — it feels as though Apple has put a lot of thought into this issue. There are even rumours that Apple is working with LG and Samsung to add thinner displays to the next Apple Watch, in order to fit in a larger battery without increasing the size or changing the design of the watch.
