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by enlyth 1368 days ago
I just find it weird that in their reveal event they portrayed all these people doing extreme sports in the middle of nowhere, climbing some huge mountain with the watch, and then you find out it has a battery life of 36 hours at most. You're supposed to carry a power bank to your climbing expedition and charge your watch constantly? How impractical is that.
3 comments

You mean you don’t snap on the magnetic puck while the watch is still on your arm, cable dangling, while you hold a power bank in your hand?
Does the Apple Watch actually support charging in the middle of a workout?

The first generations of the Garmin Fenix actually supported charging in use with a very overcomplicated charging cable: https://youtu.be/S9haDnwIuSQ

It does not. As soon as you take the puck out, you have to input your pin again.
Well, if you're climbing some huge mountain in the middle of nowhere you probably need to charge your Garmin as well.

Garmin absolutely has better battery life. But if you can see your way to charging the Apple Watch more frequently it seems more interesting for a combination of regular smartwatch use and day activities. And, if you are climbing huge mountains in the middle of nowhere, I assume purchasing a specialized watch if you want one is the least of your expenses. (Or something like an InReach.)

You may need to charge… but the Garmin uses something like ~10mAh/day? You could top off the watch for months with a single pair of AAA batteries.
Just make sure you keep them warm.

It's been a while since I've done any high-altitude mountaineering. I honest don't know what people actually use these days. Certainly GPS watches didn't exist when I was climbing. Not sure if people use power-hungry watches that need to be charged these days or not.

I feel like if you are going on a week long hike, carrying a power bank is not that noticeable compared to everything else you need. A power bank that fits in your pocket would power the watch for a month.