The Apple Watch 10 needs better battery life to stay relevant in 2024
This week, rumors emerged that the Apple Watch 10 would arrive with a more energy-efficient OLED display, offering more control over the screen’s power consumption than the Liquid Retina OLED displays that the top Apple Watches used in previous years.
This could require much less battery power than the current screen and could lead to a longer battery life. To me, that’s the biggest change Apple could make that would convince me to take the plunge and wear an Apple Watch as my main timepiece.
For context, I’ve worn a lot of watches in my role as Fitness and Wearables Editor, but every time a review sample circulates on my wrist, I only have a few that I go back to as my default choice. If I’m in the middle of an intense training block (at the time of writing this the London Marathon is just over a week away), I wear a Garmin Epix Pro, which lasts up to two weeks between charges, or even an Apple Watch Ultra 2 if I use an iPhone, which gives me 36 hours – just under two days.
If I take it easy—with training largely limited to yoga, the gym, and the climbing center—I’ll likely return to my beloved Casio digital watches, like those of our Editor-in-Chief Lance Ulanoff. recently. Cheap and cheerful with a timer, alarm and stopwatch, plus they have a seven-year battery life. If I want to track my sleep or other stats, I pair it with one of the best smart rings, like an Oura ring, which also lasts a full week between charges.
Do you notice anything here? It’s all about battery life. While testing the Apple Watch Series 9, I found the 18-hour battery life to be a bug compared to the Apple Watch Ultra 2. When I test an Apple Watch that isn’t an Ultra, I often go to bed with my clothes on. and wake up cursing that my wrist-mounted squirrel has been transformed from one of the best smartwatches into a useless hunk of metal and plastic.
As someone who enjoys running, I use the battery-draining GPS training feature four to five times a week during a training block, often for extended periods, so having a spare charger at work has become a necessity during testing.
If something makes you swear more than smile, it’s not fit for purpose. It’s been a long time since the Apple Watch got a decent battery upgrade. The OnePlus Watch 2 can hit 100 hours with some clever dual-OS wrangling, and even the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 range, Apple’s closest Android rival, now hits 40 hours. Although the Apple Watch is still the best-selling smartwatch by a wide margin, a battery performance that is still stuck at 18 hours is simply not good enough in 2024.
With the Samsung Galaxy Ring on the horizon, alternative wearable formats are reaching the mainstream and the era of the best smartwatches may be over. Wearable technology is becoming sleeker and less intrusive, and this trend means they last longer, causing less disruption to users.
Health and wellness wearables are also doubling down on their focus on sleep: the Galaxy Ring briefing I attended was almost entirely focused on rest and recovery, and Fitbit has just redesigned the Sleep page of its excellent app. As it stands, Apple can’t compete in this area because so many users need to charge their watches overnight.
To stay at the head of the pack, Apple must evolve. Bringing the Ultra’s 36-hour battery life to the flagship Apple Watch 10 would be the biggest quality of life change an Apple Watch user could ask for. Every power-saving initiative Apple has implemented in recent years has been immediately deployed to power the watch’s new tricks, like the Series 9’s double-tap feature.
This year I don’t want anything flashy; I want Apple to focus on giving us more time with his watches.