Wesley's Tool-Box

1. Charging Speed

I knew that my Apple Watch gets charged in about two hours, but I couldn't do charging test because it's rare to see it drained to 0% on normal use and I was collecting battery use data for the first three weeks. Now that this was done, I induced the watch to drain until it went into Power Reserve mode as it hit below 1%. Then I put it on the charger to see how it went back to 100%. During the time, no notifications were received by the watch and the only time the screen was on was when I checked the charging status every 5 minutes.

Apple's official document claims that a (38mm) Apple Watch would charge up to 80% in 1.5 hours, and take another hour to hit 100%. In testing my 42mm watch, it charged to 82% in 1 hour 20 minutes, getting about 5 to 6% charged every 5 minutes. 37 minutes later it became fully charged, taking slightly less than two hours (1 hour 57 minutes) total. Perhaps Apple's estimates were conservative.

Seeing as I generally have 20 to 30% of battery left when I charge it daily, this means I can put my watch back on after about an hour and a half of charging. Less downtime is good.


2. Water, Cleaning, & Touch Screen

In the first two weeks of use, I didn't let my Apple Watch touch flowing water. I simply wiped off any dirt or sweat with a cloth. Interestingly, the digital crown began to feel sticky. It used to be that it would effortlessly spin when touched with a finger, but this was not the case anymore.

Seeing that the device was water resistant, I thought it would make sense to clean it with water to resolve the situation. And indeed, after a light dip in the running tap water, the stickiness was gone. To prevent any future occurrences and for good hygiene, I have the watch washed at least once daily these days.

As I wash the watch, the flow of water onto the touch screen usually turns the screen off. But occasionally the screen gets turned back on and certain flows of water get interpreted as finger touches, resulting in unintended button pushes or swipes. This seems to be the culprit of a minor annoyance when swimming with the Apple Watch. Midway through a swimming session, it sometimes decides to stop logging, and an errant press on the (X) button on the screen might have happened.

With some of the smart watches or bands lasting a few days to a week, Apple Watch's claim of an 18-hour use for a typical day in case of the 38mm version was viewed as being too short and even the worries about the device not lasting a full day came about. Apple did claim that the 42mm version had a larger battery and would last somewhat longer. With all these in mind, I decided to log the daily battery status of my 42mm Apple Watch Sport for the past three weeks.

So how was it? First of all, Apple Watch doesn't say anything outright about its battery status unless it drops to 10%, at which it displays the warning you see above. (You could check the exact amount of battery left from one of the Glances whenever you want, by the way.) Personally, it was rare for me to even encounter this message at the end of a normal day, as you'll see later. So that alone tells you that the device is good enough for a full-day use. If you do get to see the warning, you could choose to enter the Power Reserve mode or ignore.

Power Reserve mode shuts down every function except the the time-telling ability like you see above so that it'll function as a watch as long as possible. When the battery does go near 0% (I think it happened around 2% remaining), it'll automatically enter this mode anyway. It's a last ditch effort to maintain its identity until you're able to charge it back to its normal life, so it'll be good if it could be avoided as much as possible.


This graph shows the result of the three-week use, which included all sorts of different usage patterns. Some involved heavy testing; some days I was traveling overseas; and some days I wasn't doing much but mostly sit around the office. All these were boiled down to these coloured bars - green bar represents the actual use time for the day, and the violet bar is the estimated time left until the battery runs out based on the remaining battery percentage noted on the far right.

On average, I got 22 hours and 12 minutes of use per day, with 6 hours and 17 minutes of use left, or about 22%. At no time did the combined time dip below 18 hours. These all clearly indicate that the 42mm version can last one full day of use. And if you forgot to recharge before going into sleep, you still have a good chance that it'll at least last the morning until you can get a two-hour charging session then.

What's also clear is that it will not realistically last full two days unless you use it really sparingly, so you need to get used to a daily recharging routine. Personally, I try to recharge about two hours before bedtime and get into sleep with a fully charged watch. I'm fine with this, but for those wanting to minimize the gap as much as possible, it might be disappointing.

I've been doing a comparison test of battery life between iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 5S for a few days. While that was happening, a bit of brouhaha over how iPhone 6 and 6 Plus supposedly bends in your pocket had been circulating the internet. It turned out that the whole thing was overblown as I suspected, and I already pointed out that it was okay to put it in the front pockets in general even before this so-called "bendgate / bendghazi" rolled in.

In any case, my belt cases work quite well. I try to use both phones identically when doing battery life comparison, so I have to have them carried around as close to me as possible. So I had my iPhone 5S strapped to my left side, while the 6 Plus took up my right side as you can see here. No worries about bending, and easy to get it out quickly, too. In normal times, I simply have one less iPhone on my waist.


As for the charging comparison side of things, Apple decided to save a bit of money on the charger. Although iPhone 6 Plus has nearly twice the battery charge as the previous models, it still ships with the same 5W charger. This is similar to how iPad mini ships with a 5W one instead of a 10W or 12W one like the "normal" iPads.

It's disappointing that Apple opted to do this, but maybe it isn't all that bad. The only way to find out is through testing. In order to see how much of an impact a lower-powered charger would cause, I prepared both 5W and 10W Apple-branded chargers for the tests.