Neil Hughes
Though Apple was mum about battery life for its forthcoming wrist-worn accessory when it was announced on Tuesday, the company has since said that it expects people to charge it nightly, suggesting the battery life will offer about one day of operation.
"There's a lot of new technology packed into Apple Watch and we think people will love using it throughout the day," Apple spokeswoman Nat Kerris said in a statement to Re/code. "We anticipate that people will charge nightly, which is why we designed an innovative charging solution that combines our MagSafe technology and inductive charging."
But sources who spoke with John Paczkowski went further, and indicated that the company isn't happy with the current uptime of the Apple Watch. One person said the watch's battery life is currently "about a day," and that the company is working on modifications ahead of its launch to improve it.
A one-day battery life is about on par with other touchscreen smart watches currently available on the market, including devices running the competing Android Wear platform.
The uptime stands in contrast to less powerful smart watches, like the Pebble, which utilizes a monochrome black-and-white display and lacks a touchscreen. Pebble's low-power screen is always on and provides up to a week of use before the wrist-borne device needs to be recharged.
Battery life for the Apple Watch remains somewhat up in the air because the product isn't yet finalized and ready for launch. Apple revealed on Tuesday that the wearable device will launch at some time in early 2015, but declined to offer a more specific window.
The company was also vague on other aspects of the hardware, including pricing. While the Apple Watch will start at $349, a breakdown of how much various models will cost was not given.
While the Apple Watch will start at $349, it's possible that the high-end models could reach into a five-figure price point. The luxury Apple Watch Edition is made of hardened 18-karat gold, and existing 18-karat gold watches typically sell for more than $10,000.
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242 Comments
I don't think this is a deal breaker for anyone. It is kind of the standard today that devices charge over night... when we don't use them anyhow...
Apple still needs to solve this energy dilemma. A one day battery life for all these devices is just pathetic considering the technological advancements of the past 20 years.
I've just decided I'll get two. One for work, then when I get home just throw it on the charger and put a sport one on for the rest of the day and for the gym and runs. Considering a decent watch costs about the same as two of the base models of the Apple watch it's not really a big deal.
Actually, if this device is meant to track sleeping (similar to my FitBit?), then overnight charging makes it so you can't track sleeping, right? Seems to defeat (a small) part of its intended purpose. As for the high end models (19K gold or rose gold), I think it'd be hard to justify that expense given that this is a 1.0 product. I'm sure the $349 starting point is for the sport band, and once you get to the leather and stainless steel bands, it's going to jump considerably from there. Good leather bands can cost a pretty penny, and these are specially made, so that's going to add to the cost. I'm interested, but cautious until Apple gets into much greater detail on battery life and pricing.
I doubt the gold watch will be 10K. I bought my wife an 18K watch that has a lot more gold in it than the Apple watch and it was only 1.5K.