Apple apparently hasn't solved the smartwatch battery life problem

Everyone has been waiting hear just how long Apple's smartwatch will last on a charge. Well, we'll have to wait for confirmation, but current rumors don't suggest there's any reason to believe that Cupertino has solved the biggest problem plaguing the market. According to 9to5Mac the Apple Watch will settle in at about two to three days in standby mode, and between 2.5 and 3.5 hours of active application use. In other words: not much better than existing smartwatches. Just displaying the watch face is enough to drain the battery in three hours, though, we imagine nobody is going to keep the time displayed for three hours straight. Apple's goal is apparently 19 hours of mixed use, but reports are that it will probably fall short of that benchmark with its first generation device.

Part of the short battery life is certainly due to the powerful processor on the inside. 9to5Mac's sources indicate that the S1 chip is not too far behind the A5 inside the iPod touch, in terms of pure performance. It's powerful enough to keep the tiny, but "Retina-class" display chugging along at 60 frames per-second. And that relatively beefy processor is running a stripped down version of iOS codenamed SkiHill, rather than some barebones firmware designed simply for pulling in notifications.

So what does all this mean? Well, we'll have to wait for a final product to say for sure. But it seems safe to assume that reviews of the Apple Watch won't be praising its battery life.