Published in Mobiles

Yeah, you’ll have to charge your Apple Watch daily

by on11 September 2014



That was the ‘one more thing’ they failed to mention

Apple’s first smartwatch appears to have failed to address the most glaring shortcoming of all fully functional smartwatches – terrible battery life.

Although Apple diehards were expecting something truly game changing, even Cupertino did not manage to fix the problem. The company did not talk about battery life at the launch event, although CEO Tim Cook hinted at overnight charging.

Apple expects daily charging


A bit more info has appeared since the event. A source close to Apple told re/code that the company is not happy with the device’s battery life and that it isn’t going to break any industry standards. The source said it is about a day right now, but Apple it trying to tweak it ahead of launch.

Apple spokeswoman Nat Kerris told re/code that she could not provide an estimate on the battery life. However, Kerris said Apple expects users will charge their Apple Watch once a day.

“We anticipate that people will charge nightly which is why we designed an innovative charging solution that combines our MagSafe technology and inductive charging,” said Kerris.


Smartwatches with stupid battery life


It is not like Apple did not try. The company deserves praise for designing the first smartwatch specific SoC module. Not much is known about the S1 SoC, but it is not an off-the-shelf design like TI and Qualcomm parts used in Android Wear watches.

This also raises another question. Did Apple and Motorola get it wrong? Did everyone with wireless charging get it wrong? Do we need proper copper pins and inductive charging in the same package?

It will take a lot of time before we see smartwatches that can keep up with tablets and smartphones in terms of battery life, but a smartphone can easily be topped up on the go using a cheap portable charger. Even tiny keychain models are appearing now – but you can’t use them for the Moto 360 or the Apple Watch. In theory they could be used to top off Samsung and LG watches, but that would also be impractical, since they rely on proprietary charging docks.

Smartphones do not, you can plug them in anywhere.

If only someone could figure it out, if only someone could integrate a USB port into a smartwatch without running the looks and adding more bulk. Oh wait, Alcatel sort of did that already.

alcatel-wave-smartwatch w 500

Simply flipping the the end off the rubber band on the Alcatel Wave reveals a full-sized USB connector, so you can charge it anywhere - no dock, no wireless, no microUSB cable, no nonsense.

Keeping it simple may not be such a bad idea. Leave it to a value brand to come up with a cheap, practical solution that does not rely on any proprietary tech. It is not perfect, but that is a matter of perspective - it still beats having a smartwatch that can't be charged without specialised hardware.

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