“The Apple Watch, of course, really does do a lot more than any old wristwatch – and as I’ll explain below, the device has so far really changed the way I’ve been using my iPhone,” Chris Smith writes for BGR. “If you’re willing to invest in one, you’ll soon see that investment pay off. The Watch already saves me time each day the more I use it. It only takes me a few short seconds to check notifications and glance over weather, calendar, maps and health and other quick info without having to whip out my iPhone.”
“The Apple Watch is better than any other smartwatch I’ve tried,” Smith writes. “Apple did not compromise when it comes to design, and the images you see online don’t do it justice. You just have to touch and wear one to really understand. It’s light and comfortable and once you put it on and integrate it in your daily routine, you won’t want to take it off… I hate that the stainless steel model scratches, as mine did after only three days of use.”
“The Watch is a major technological achievement. The S1 chip inside it is a marvel of technology and future generations will make the device even more powerful,” Smith writes. “The thing I love most about the Watch is that it really freed me from checking the iPhone as often as I used to. I have everything I need coming in right on the Watch. The device will tell me when the important people in my life are looking for me, and offer me ways of quickly responding to their pings. It’ll tell me when I’m needed at work, and it’ll deliver updates on my health and fitness life on a regular basis. And of course, it will tell me what time it is. For everything else, entertainment included, I have an iPhone and a computer.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: In his full review, Smith recounts his dislike over “having to charge it when I least expect it…seeing the battery go off in the middle of a fitness session, at which point the device will stop tracking fitness data… [and] wondering whether there’s enough battery to wake you up in the morning, and worrying about packing a second charger.
The reason for this is that Smith is wearing his Apple Watch “all the time,” including “while sleeping.”
That’s just silly.
Take your Apple Watch off at night. That’s when you charge it. We’ve never ended a day, however long, with the Watch in the red. Apple Watch’s battery life is excellent. You simply charge it regularly and there’s no better time than when you’re asleep.
This is the daily Apple Watch use cycle that Apple intends: Use it while you’re awake, recharge it while you recharge, and you’ll never run out a power during a fitness session, worry about it not waking you up or about packing a second charger.
Related articles:
The Telegraph reviews Apple Watch: Object of desire – May 7, 2015
Cult of Mac reviews Apple Watch: ‘Futuristic, fun and fan-flipping-tastic’ – April 28, 2015
PC Magazine reviews Apple Watch: ‘The best smartwatch available’ – April 28, 2015
Apple Watch owners shame so-called professional reviewers – April 27, 2015
The 2:26 Apple Watch review (with video) – April 9, 2015
Tech.pinions’ Ben Bajarin reviews Apple Watch: ‘Powerful’ and ‘completely new’ – April 8, 2015
WSJ’s Stern reviews Apple Watch: ‘Good looks and coolness’ – April 8, 2015
The Verge’s Patel reviews Apple Watch: ‘A masterpiece of engineering’ – April 8, 2015
WSJ’s Fowler reviews Apple Watch: ‘The first smartwatch worth buying’ – April 8, 2015
Yahoo Tech’s Pogue reviews Apple Watch: ‘Magical’
New York Times’ Manjoo reviews Apple Watch: ‘A power you can’t live without’ – April 8, 2015
Bloomberg’s Topolsky reviews Apple Watch: ‘The world’s best smartwatch’ – April 8, 2015
USA Today’s Baig reviews Apple Watch: ‘Second to none; I want one’ – April 8, 2015″>Daring Fireball’s Gruber on a week with Apple Watch – April 8, 2015
Tech.pinions’ Ben Bajarin reviews Apple Watch: ‘Powerful’ and ‘completely new’ – April 8, 2015
WSJ’s Stern reviews Apple Watch: ‘Good looks and coolness’ – April 8, 2015
The Verge’s Patel reviews Apple Watch: ‘A masterpiece of engineering’ – April 8, 2015
WSJ’s Fowler reviews Apple Watch: ‘The first smartwatch worth buying’ – April 8, 2015
Yahoo Tech’s Pogue reviews Apple Watch: ‘Magical’
New York Times’ Manjoo reviews Apple Watch: ‘A power you can’t live without’ – April 8, 2015
Bloomberg’s Topolsky reviews Apple Watch: ‘The world’s best smartwatch’ – April 8, 2015
USA Today’s Baig reviews Apple Watch: ‘Second to none; I want one’ – April 8, 2015
I just put mine on for the first time 2 hours ago; I already never want to take it off. Called a few people from my wrist, sent and received some texts, apple-paid for lunch at Panera Bread… this thing is great! It even plays and controls Pandora and iTunes via bluetooth in my car.
I’ll take it off to shower and when I’m sleeping, that’s it.
Oh and regarding MDN take: Yes, it is absolutely foolish to wear your Apple Watch while you’re sleeping and while you’re in the shower. I remember trying that for a while when I was wearing a watch back in the ’90s in high school, and after a few weeks when I finally took it off, the underside of the strap was crusty and gross. I think it was an accumulation of lint, sweat, dead skin and soap scum…and probably a petri dish of bacteria. So take your watches off when you sleep and shower, fools! It’s unhygienic not to.
“Embrace the defects” steel scratching or otherwise in that used Star Wars future, Road (Tech) Warrior kind of way. It says you’re living a busy full life and getting most out of your personal technology.
Dude, Star Wars is not the future, it was a long time ago in a galaxy…never mind 🙂
Certainly Star Wars tech is in our future. Maybe. 🙂
I have come across one major battery killer that could be fixed through a software update. I occasionally take some road trips that are several hours and I find that using the iPhone’s GPS (which then sends directions to your watch) for long durations kills the battery, even when you don’t need to turn for like 60 miles for a large portion of the drive. Obviously using GPS is going to drain your battery, but I was a bit surprised by the severity.
The issue can be avoided by putting your watch in power reserve mode during the drive, or perhaps Apple could figure out a way to push the updates to the watch more conservatively based on the distance you’ll be going before your next turn, and send an immediate push if the phone detects you’ve gone off track early.
Battery seems to fall about 10-15% an hour while driving long distances with GPS turn-by-turn enabled. I had to enable power reserve mode to prevent a fully dead watch. On 15 hours of use, including 7 hours of driving (5 of which were in reserve mode), I had just under 10% battery left. But I guarantee the watch would have been dead after another hour and a half of driving without reserve mode, making it only a 6 hour day and a few hours of GPS.
Sounds like for you maybe going into the Apple Watch app and disabling notifications for Maps might help.
Disabling the notifications is also a good idea, and I’ve considered this as well. But overall, the feature is very useful and convenient for short trips, and for short trips the drain isn’t so terrible, so wouldn’t want to completely disable it. An additional benefit of using power reserve mode for long trips is that you conserve tons of battery life in a time you would otherwise not really be interacting with the watch all that much anyway.
Maybe they designed it this way as a safety measure, knowing users driving would just flip it into power reserve mode, disabling notifications, and thus not imparting their driving by checking their watch. (Half joking.)
You’re wrong about the battery. Some people and/or Watches are NOT getting 18 hours. I’ve reported it to Apple. I’m an early adopter if there ever was one, have had all the iPhones and all the iPads. On the Watch, I don’t bother with digital touch because of its battery consumption and have turned off Activate on Wrist Raise so that it won’t come on every time I move my arm. I don’t play games (why would someone?!). I get very few Notifications. I don’t use the Call feature. I don’t play music through it. At the end of every day my Watch has been under 10% — meaning that some functions don’t work — including the Usage report that I would like to take screenshots of every night. By “end of the day” I mean: the first full day was 6% by 4:30 and most other nights I’ve had to put it on the charger between 8-10 even though *my* day is not done. My point: some people and/or Watches have legitimate troubles with the 18 hour battery quote. your usage may be typical but it is not universal!
Do not agree! We have two in our household…
Not even close ..! See me post below !
You may have a bad battery.. ….
Are you using the workout app? It is a major drain, in addition to the GPS I mentioned in the post above. I haven’t had any issues doing just the straight 30 minute workout, but if you workout a lot then the heart rate sensor may be killing the battery. You can disable the heart rate sensor for workout sessions to greatly enhance battery life if you’re a heavy exerciser.
If that’s not the case, I would recommend paying close attention to what you’re actually doing and see if modifying your behavior slightly will point to the source, through process of elimination.
Then there’s also the possibility that you got a battery that should not have passed quality checks, but before you go getting a replacement, make sure it’s not something you’re doing on the watch that’s causing it.
I wear mine for about 16 hours + a day… And i use it for most of my immediate communications.. Texts , short calls.. Digital touch.. Animated Emojies.. Speech to text ..Etc.
And i do about 2 hours of Bikram yoga … 1.5 hour actual session and 15 mins before and after. .. Monitoring heart-rate and calories burned… … I use the activity app for this !
On average i have about 30%+ battery left when i go to bed and start charging it!
Battery life is no issue..
But .. But… It is possible for the watch not to get fully charged overnight… I dont know the exact reason for this( still testing for a pattern ) …Symptoms are warm watch after charging.. .if this happens make sure u check the status of your charge! It will probably not be fully charged and be somewhere around 40-50% charge….
The fix is a quick reboot of the watch.. Once i did this .. All worked fine! Haven’t had it happen again ! ( it only happened to me twice.. 2 days in a row)
Most amazing is the watch surviving Bikram Yoga on daily basis.
105 to 115 degrees, 40 to 50% humidity .. And me soaked in not dripping but flooding sweat. … And then on top showers…I am amazed !
And ohhh….for those who are curios…. 900 active calories burned in one session. Total of 1100 calories of active and static calories. Heart-rate range from min of 55 to 150 ….
I am Totally addicted to this watch !
Why are there so many downvotes around here lately?
Troll attack !
Im sure the competition has a team of paid trolls systematically downvoteing everything.. Specially the watch or any positive comment.
What these idiots dont reslize is that they are barking at the wrong tree.. ..and that all they are doing is discrediting their employers and rendering them as lowlives. ( a la Samdung)
Its a form of lowlife strategy by the lowlife competition.
Get a life trolls!
Ps( mdn says they are working on a fix in their app that will partially take care of this problem ! )
Two things I’ve been experimenting with are activation on wrist raise (I now manually press the digital crown to see the screen) and Reducing Transparency. The second one, I think, really makes the display look better and has some benefit in reducing battery use. I really didn’t like the “transparency” effect – I though it had a sort of “ghosting” effect.
YMMV
Here are the settings if you’re interested in playing with them:
General/Activate on Wrist raise
General/Accessibility/Reduce Transparency: ON
Amazing that the haterz at BGR didn’t find some snarky, vicious way to slam the watch. I stopped reading BGR several years ago; too many of their “writers” just revile all things Apple.
When BGR writers don’t generate enough revulsion, the acid comments make up for it.