Now that the keynote is over, Apple has shared more information about the Apple Watch Series 3’s battery life. During the presentation Apple touted an 18-hour all-day battery life, and while that might be the case, they certainly weren’t talking about using the wearables LTE capabilities or doing a GPS enabled workout.
As with mosts devices Apple posts a detailed breakdown of battery life statistics on their website, and the Series 3 is no different. Apple claims that when connected to an iPhone via bluetooth, the Series 3 should get up to 3 hours of talk time. Although that figure drops dramatically when connected to LTE to just “over 1 hour.” In terms of workouts, Apple estimates that the Series 3 will get roughly 10 hours of battery life for indoor workouts and 5 hours of outdoor workouts with GPS in use. That number drops down to 4 hours though if both GPS and LTE are in use.
Apple states that “Apple Watch battery testing was conducted by Apple in August 2017 using preproduction Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS) and Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS + Cellular), each paired with an iPhone.”
Tested with heart rate sensor on during workout sessions. Indoor workout tested while connected to iPhone via Bluetooth. Outdoor workout with GPS tested with Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS) without iPhone. Outdoor workout with GPS and LTE tested with Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS + Cellular) without iPhone.
While for the most part battery life doesn’t seem that great, music playback was bumped up to 10 hours from the previous generations 6.5. Although, Apple has failed to give statistics on playback when streaming over LTE.