The Apple Watch was the cynosure of all eyes at Apple’s big September event last year, but Apple deftly sidestepped any direct questions about the device’s battery life. “You will have to charge it every night,” was all they were content to say then, and even now, that’s what their official statement is. Which led a multitude of us to wonder – and rightly so – just how long might it last?
The well-connected Mark Gurman at 9to5Mac states that Apple initially wanted the Apple Watch battery to provide roughly one full day of usage, mixing a comparatively small amount of active use with a larger amount of passive use. As of 2014, Apple wanted the Watch to provide roughly 2.5 to 4 hours of active application use versus 19 hours of combined active/passive use, 3 days of pure standby time, or 4 days if left in a sleeping mode. Sources, however, say that Apple will only likely achieve approximately 2-3 days in either the standby or low-power modes…
Apple has also been stress-testing the Apple Watch’s battery life with pre-bundled and third-party applications. Our sources say that Apple is targeting 2.5 hours of “heavy” application use, such as processor-intensive gameplay, or 3.5 hours of standard app use. Interestingly, Apple expects to see better battery life when using the Watch’s fitness tracking software, which is targeted for nearly 4 hours of straight exercise tracking on a single charge.
This isn’t unlike what you’d get from the current field of Android smartwatches; use them constantly and they won’t last a day. But that changes with more average use. Notably, the Pebble smartwatch continues to blow away the field in terms of battery life, but it’s a very different device when compared against a Moto 360 or the Apple Watch. In standby and low-power modes, 9to5Mac’s sources say Apple Watch can last through two or three days. And if for some reason you want to use it strictly as a timepiece and leave the screen on at all times, it’ll die out after three or so hours.