Apple Watch Battery Life

By David, 16 August, 2015

Forum
watchOS and Apple Watch Apps

Hi,

What are people's experiences of their Apple Watch battery life? So far, my 38mm watch has been exceeding expectations. The headline was about 18 hours. But I'm regularly getting double that, at about 36 hours, and with a very little care, I can get it up to 48 hours.

I'm not a heavy user. I don't listen to music on the watch, nor do I regularly use mapping or navigation apps. But I do make phone calls with it and check notifications and read and send messages quite often. I also use the activity and workout apps as well as a bus checker and banking app.

I have noticed that it has helped a little to switch on the screen curtain. But if I'm out on social events, or as recently on holiday, I like to leave the screen on so that I can select a different watch face to suit the occasion. During a formal ceremony, I switched to a clean, white, analogue face, while on an astronomy stargazing session up on the top deck of a liner, I switched to the astronomy face. Even so, I was getting wel over 18 hours life out of it.

This is not to say that I don't regularly charge it up every day, just to be sure that I have full battery for the following day. But I do also leave it to run very low, just to see how long it will last and get a full charging cycle.

What's your experience?

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Comments

By Louise on Saturday, August 22, 2015 - 05:20

I have been using the 38 mm for about 2 weeks now. I find that at the end of the day, I usually have about %50 or so left. I am not a heavy user, but certainly have been playing with it quite a bit while I get to know it.

By Seanoevil on Saturday, August 22, 2015 - 05:20

Hi,
I have had my 42 mmApple Watch Sports for a week now and have been pleasantly surprised by the battery life.
I would consider myself a light user, but still regularly have 50% battery left at the end of a 16 hour day.
Yesterday I used Maps for 40 mins highway navigation, Workout to track a 50 minute Outside Walk and a 50 minute Eleptical session, , and Reminders for 2 location based alerts. At the end of the day, I still had 42%. battery
I have made only minor adjustments to the settings to improve Battery such as reducing brightness to 33% and blocking all notifications other than Messages, Reminder and Calendar.
There are as many reasons to buy or not to buy an Apple Watch as their are individual wrists to wear them, but in my honest opinion Battery life is not one of them.

@SeaNoEvil00