Apple CEO confirms: You will have to charge our watch every day

Most watches will run for months without needing a battery change. The Apple Watch, being much smarter and more powerful, will have a much shorter battery life: About a day, according to Apple chief executive Tim Cook.

“We think you’re going to end up charging it daily,” Cook said, according to a report in the Verge. “Overnight — that’s what we think.”

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While this might seem like a minor detail, it’s a notable concession, since Apple took pains not to mention its watch’s battery life when it first announced the Apple Watch at a splashy event on September 9. The watch is not expected to be available until early next year.

Cook was speaking at the WSJD Live event hosted by the Wall Street Journal.

The company is “still trying to understand usage patterns” on watches, he noted, so how often you need to recharge the watch will depend on how much you actually use it. In other words, your mileage may vary: That estimate of a daily recharge might be way too conservative for a casual user, who might only need to recharge every few days, or it might be too optimistic for someone who constantly uses their watch and runs the battery down by lunchtime.

A daily recharge for a device that lacks a GPS or cellular radio suggests that the device’s screen and/or processor are drawing a fair amount of power. It also indicates that Apple has probably not made any breakthroughs in battery technology.