For me, it comes down to two things. First, I do not want to have to charge every night since I use my watch as a silent vibrating alarm, and I track my sleep. It seems like Apple has basically overcome this hurdle, now that you can charge while you shower and basically get by.

The other issue is that I don't want to have to bring Yet Another Dongle™ every time I go away for a weekend or short business trip. Most of my trips are ≤ 4 days, so if AWs could reliably go that long (including battery degradation over time) then I'd consider getting one.

Right now, only the AWU even approaches this, and only in low-power mode. If it weren't a thousand dollars, I'd consider it. But between the low-power requirement and the pricing, it's just no contest in my book. I'm getting a new Pebble, which offers a month of battery life at 1/3 of the cost.

That would be slick. Perhaps the problem is it would get hot, and possibly burn?

The watch has sleep data (for example phase durations like rem sleep and apnoe), the health app just doesn’t compute a „score“.

> I truly thought this was a solved problem.

I charge when showering in the morning. 15 minutes is enough for the day + night, half an hour to charge it fully.

And that's the fancy screen, gimmick edition garmin watch - the normal MIP display garmin watches (even an old, midrange Forerunner 255) will easily get a couple of weeks of battery life, more for the higher end ones.

OLED is just the wrong screen tech for these devices, never made any sense to me given how little I care about graphics and how little time I spend reading the display.

Yes. My Pebble Steel got over a week of battery in 2015, had physical, tactile buttons that worked even wearing thick winter gloves, and had an always-on-no-matter-what screen that was clearly readable in full sunlight.

Every smartwatch that hasn't met that bar, which is almost all of them ever made, is a joke to me. I'd have ordered a RePebble had I not moved back to analogue dumbwatches instead just before they were announced (and were iOS not actively hostile to competing watch implementations).

depends which camp of apple watch (or smart watch in general) users you are asking.

the camp that sees the smartwatch as an accessory to their smartphone that does fitness tracking and maybe a few other useful things to avoid pulling their phone out constantly - those people want MUCH longer battery life.

the camp that sees the smartwatch as a REPLACEMENT to their smartphone, they are perfectly fine with the current battery life.

Yep, easily the worst part of mine, especially since it has to charge at a different time than my phone to allow for sleep tracking.

My biggest complaint with my Apple Watch is that I have to choose between sleep tracking and being able to wear my watch all day.

Yes, my 5 year old Garmin still lasts about 10 days. And thats with using GPS tracking + bluetooth audio for multiple recorded activities.

Yes. Simply yes for a lot of people.

Most of this is because of the always-on screen. If you can live without it and switch back to the motion or button to wake mode, you get 30-50% more usage before the battery runs out, which is not a huge improvement but is a legitimate option.

A side effect is that this makes your watch look less new, and therefore less of a theft target.

real watches last like 24 months minimum

Look at the latest model, your eyes won't see it. Stop spreading FUD

Banking apps are a common example that requires you to be on latest, yet my phone is stuck in Android 10 land.

Whatsapp also no longer works on it, thus the phone is useless.

Which is sad, as it has a great camera, battery life and is very light.

One extra 'thing' to need - at the moment I know that I can play music through anything that has a line-in, with just a cable. However Bluetooth seems to work ok - for devices that support it.

Not OP but my concern is putting strain on the charging port by walking with headphones while my phone is in my pocket.

Wireless chargers are pretty good but it’s still a pain to wear out your port.