The Apple Watch won’t be available until April 24th, but now that Apple has revealed pricing details for its first line of smartwatches, the company is starting to answer some of the questions people have had about the devices.

Wonder how much storage space the Apple Watch has? 8GB… but you can only use 2GB for music, 75MB for photos, and the rest is reserved for apps, the operating system, and other data.

Want to know if the battery can replaced? Yes… kind of.

aw gold

TechCrunch reports that you’ll have to send your watch in to Apple to have the battery replaced. You can’t just pop open the case and insert a new battery yourself.

That solves one of my big questions: Why would spend thousands of dollars on a top-tier Apple Watch Edition that needs to be charged every day if it means that within a few years the battery will be dead and the watch will be useless? Apparently the answer is that you can get a new battery and keep the watch running for years to come.

What we still don’t know is if anyone will want to keep using a first-generation Apple Watch in 5 or 10 years. Surely there will be new models with more efficient hardware for longer battery life, faster processors, or other advanced features by then?

apple watch charging

It’s also not clear how long Apple will continue to support the first-gen Apple Watch with software updates. The company no longer rolls out new software for first-gen iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, or other old hardware.

The $10,000 to $17,000 price tags for the most expensive Apple Watch Edition wristwear aren’t actually ridiculous if you compare these watches to high-end analog watches. But those watches are meant to last for decades or even centuries… it’s not clear at this point just how long the useful lifespan of an Apple Watch will be.

Of course, while Apple is positioning its high-end watches as fashion accessories, they’re not the company’s only models. The Apple Watch Sport Edition has a starting price of $349, which makes it a bit pricey when compared with a Samsung, Motorola, or Pebble smartwatch. But it’s a lot easier to justify spending $349 on a device that might stop getting software updates in a few years than $17,000. After all, plenty of people already do that with smartphones that get replaced every two years or so.

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,547 other subscribers

7 replies on “Apple Watch battery is replaceable… by Apple”

  1. The stainless steel version is $550 vs $299 for the stainless steel Pebble Time
    I considerable difference. I think I prefer the epaper screen, and 7 day battery life as well

  2. 75MB for photos. That’s…generous? Also why store the music on the watch, when you could just stream it from the phone? It’s not like you can use the watch without the phone anyways. Also the photos. But what I really don’t understand the 6GB storage space for the apps. Till now we heard that the apps actually run on the phone and the watch is only the display: https://9to5mac.com/2014/11/18/apple-watchkit-third-party-apps-require-a-connected-iphone-to-function-fully-native-apps-coming-later-in-2015/
    As I understand there will be two kind of apps, the native ones and the ones that run on the phone. So, if the phone delivers the processing power and the Watch still only works for ~3 hours of screen time, what to expect with native apps? I think there will be a high demand for those replacement batteries…

    Edit: Okay, I read the 9to5 article and these storage spaces are really just a cache for untethered use, and you can stream from the phone.

    1. batteries … again an apple exclusive service … more money for the ecosystem. only fixing drugs is cheaper

  3. Walled garden apple ecosystem lockin. I’m always amazed by how profitable Apple is.

Comments are closed.