Apple has remained fairly tight lipped about the battery life of its smartwatch – but a company exec has revealed it’s an area of focus.
This is of no surprise. It’s easily the biggest gripe with the Apple Watch, and one area that competitors can use to entice customers away from Apple.
In an interview with India Today, Apple’s VP of worldwide product marketing Bob Borchers revealed that the company was looking at efficiency gain.
> How to maximize Apple Watch battery life
“There are products in the company’s line-up that continue to require further efficiency gains. One of them is the Apple Watch, which is an excellent health tracker but which will also benefit greatly from more battery life”
The Apple Watch Series and SE battery life has steadfastly remained at 18 hours since the Series 0, as the amount of features, health monitoring and tracking has increased.
Recent launches have seen Fall Detection and car crash detection added to the mix, which require continuous monitoring of sensors.
And the Apple Watch will now also track sleep, sleep stages, and keep tabs on blood oxygen. All of these take serious amounts of power, which has offset efficiencies that have already been achieved.
“The company also continues to explore how it can achieve the best way to balance features – real-time health and body tracking for features like heart alerts or fall detection – and battery life,” he continued.
The addition of sleep tracking has been one of the biggest challenges from a user’s point of view, because it means you have a short window in the morning to charge the device before continuing your day.
Rapid charging has been added to the Apple Watch since Series 7, which has made living with the Apple – which Borchers points to as a big part of the mix.
“With fast charging, you can get 80 per cent of your battery capacity in 45 to 45 minutes. And this is actually a trend that we’re starting to see with more and more of our customers,” he said.
But having moved to the Apple Watch Ultra, with 2-3 days battery life – it’s such a relief to take the pressure off charging. We’d love to see the Series and SE versions enjoy similar battery life.
How we test
James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.