The battery life of smart devices has been a battle ever since they hit the market. Consider the difference between standard cell phones from a decade ago -- the old flip phone -- and modern smartphones. The connected devices take in data, communicate over 4G, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, all while taking photos/videos and playing audio in various forms. Standard “dumb” phones connected callers and took low-resolution photos that could only be transmitted over text or USB cable. The power difference was stark, though. While smartphones still need to be charged every day, standard phones could often go two or three days before needing to be plugged in -- even longer if no calls were made.

Now we're in the age of smart wearables, led by the Apple Watch. Since its initial announcement, the Apple Watch battery life was targeted at about 18 hours with nominal usage: an average amount of background apps, audio, notifications, and calls. However, many users have found that battery life for the Apple Watch doesn't always meet that standard. While 18 hours seems like a fair amount, that does mean that it needs to be charged every day -- so if you're a daily user and forget to charge it one night, you're basically out of luck.

While Apple is attempting to rectify this in the speculated Series 3 watch, it's still something that probably won't be fixed in one single step. Software and hardware will both be iterative methods in optimizing battery life. In the meantime, there are a number of things users can do besides simply keeping a charger around.

Defining Standard Power

The original Apple Watch had a standard 18-hour battery life. This specification came from projected use of various features:

• 90 time checks
• 90 notifications
• 30 minutes of audio playback streamed from the iPhone via Bluetooth
• 45 minutes of active app usage

Your average time may vary depending on how you use these features and how often you need them.

Regardless, there are a number of ways to tweak the settings for more overall efficient power usage. Let’s take a closer look.

Top 10 Power-Saving Methods for Your Apple Watch

Save Your Battery Tip #1: Power Reserve Mode
There are many tips, tricks, and hacks to help get more out of your Apple Watch, just like any other smart device. However, also like other smart devices, there are basic settings that you should use as the foundation. Power Reserve Mode shuts down all of the bells and whistles of the Apple Watch so that it only displays the time -- you know, like any good watch should. In Power Reserve Mode, the Apple Watch can go up to 72 hours without a charge -- a far cry from the standard 18-hour specification. Now, chances are you probably won’t need or want to be in that unconnected state for three straight days. However, it’s a very sensible thing to enable, particularly if you know that you’re going to be in a long stretch of time where notifications aren’t necessary (like driving or taking a mental health break from all of that incoming information).

To access Power Reserve Mode, hold down the side button and select it from the menu that appears. Perhaps that’s the best part about Power Reserve mode -- by being so easy to access, it makes it simple to engage and should become part of your usage habit in order to extend your battery life.

Bonus Power Reserve Savings for Athletes Tip: If you use the heart sensor a lot for Activity running and walking, then there’s another efficient power mode you should be aware of. Specifically used for exercising, Power Saving mode essentially turns off the heart sensor, though it keeps distance calculations for workouts. This winds up diminishing the accuracy of your calories burned during a workout, as they become an estimate based on other data input rather than tracked heart rate. Still, if you’re in a situation where you need to conserve power, it’s a simple thing to activate. Access Power Saving mode from the iPhone’s Apple Watch app, then select Workout > Power Saving Mode.

Save Your Battery Tip #2: Limit Background Usage
One of the Apple Watch’s coolest features is also its most draining when it comes to power resources. Background app refresh is what allows apps to pull the latest and greatest updates and notifications by pinging the iPhone via Bluetooth. Consider the process flow here: the app has a regular timer to have it use Bluetooth to ping the iPhone, then another process execution as it receives data from the iPhone, then another process execution as it crunches the data and decides what to display and how to notify the user (visual, audio, haptic). This activates a number of functions and different parts of the device, draining the battery faster than many people need.

What if you don’t need all of those updates coming through? A smart way to approach this is to consider which apps you use often and which ones you may only use for a few minutes throughout the day. The Apple Watch gives you the ability to pick and choose which apps get background updates. On your iPhone, go to the Apple Watch app and open up the General settings menu. From here, you can set only a few specific apps to receive background updates or you can toggle everything on/off depending on how much power you want to conserve. Keep in mind that individual apps may also have settings about refresh frequency and notification methods (visual, audio, haptic), so it’s easy to consider customizing some power usage in order to get the functionality that you want out of the Apple Watch.

Save Your Battery Tip #3: Don't Use the Speaker
Do you stream music to your Apple Watch? Do you listen to voice mails or have conversations? Do you have an audio chime for every notification that comes through? All of those examples are ways the Apple Watch uses the speakers. It’s great in theory, but playing audio is actually one of the fastest ways to drain your Apple Watch’s battery life, making a quiet Apple Watch a power-efficient Apple Watch. There are a few different ways you can customize this experience depending on what you need. If you want a black-and-white muting of all audio, simply turn the volume all the way down by going to Settings > Sounds & Haptics and moving the slider down. If you still want some form of audio notification but don’t want it to be too loud, then you can keep it at a much lower setting. There’s also Silent Mode, which completely mutes the device. This can be accessed in the Sounds & Haptics menu or through the Control Center. And of course, the simple way to minimize speaker usage is to just not stream any audio to the Apple Watch.

Tangential to this, the power required for haptics is another unnecessary drain on the device. The force used by the Apple Watch to power haptic notifications can also be adjusted in the same menu. By decreasing the haptic strength as much as possible (or at least lighter than the default), you’ll minimize the amount of power used by the device as it silently notifies you about updates and messages.

Save Your Battery Tip #4: Turn Off iPhone Bluetooth
Keep in mind that if you're in a situation where notifications aren't particularly a big deal, you can limit the connectivity between your Apple Watch and iPhone by also closing the Apple Watch app on your phone. By eliminating this control portal, you shut off the way for the Apple Watch to check, load, and display updates. It’s a bit of blunt action, as it’s not nearly as nuanced or specific as, say, selecting which apps you want notifications from or which VIPs you want emails from. However, if you’re in a situation where you quickly want to conserve power, opening your iPhone settings and deactivating Bluetooth is a simple way to cut the digital cord between your two devices, thus leaving your Apple Watch out of touch but still practically functional.

Save Your Battery Tip #5: Organizing the Dock
watchOS 3 saw many new features that people loved, including a revamped user interface. At the heart of this was the Dock, a go-to hub for the things you use the most. When you pull an app from the Dock, it comes up nearly instantly -- up to seven times faster, according to the Apple marketing specs. The Dock, however, is also something that keeps the proverbial engine running while you’re off going about your day. Every app on the dock is active in the background and constantly refreshing. That’s why it can be loaded so quickly, and that’s why it’s always to date when it comes to notifications and status. Depending on your situation, it’s not necessary to remove everything from the Dock, but you may want to consider just what you have on there: the apps you use the most, the apps that provide you with continuous data, and the apps that have must-read notifications. Cull your app group on the Dock carefully and you’ll find that you won’t be missing much while you start extending your Apple Watch’s battery life.

Save Your Battery Tip #6: Turn off Unwanted Notifications
Push notifications are one of the primary tools of the Apple Watch. It's very convenient to flick your wrist after the device buzzes, see what's come through, and then go about your day (or choose to respond). However, that doesn't mean that you need to see absolutely everything that comes through. Notifications come in all sorts, from Activity updates to emails and texts arriving on your phone. How do you slow down which ones arrive on your Apple Watch? There are a few methods.

For Watch specific settings, open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone and select which ones you want pushed through. Really think this through and play with the ones you enable -- you might find that less really is more as you don't want to constantly be getting buzzes on your wrist for, say, a random social media update. You can also drill down to the app-specific level by opening up either the app’s settings on your iPhone or the app section of the iPhone settings. The former lets you customize the individual app while the latter acts as a gateway for app notifications on your account, and thus propagating to your Apple Watch.

This can also be done in a way that only allows specific notifications through. The easiest -- and probably most effective -- way to do this is to limit the users whose notifications are coming through. In particular, email fetching tends to use a lot of power, and most people constantly have emails coming and going into their inbox. It's possible to limit these types of things to just a few specific emails by identifying VIPs for fetching. On the iPhone, go to the Apple Watch app, then open up the Notifications menu and select your VIPs. Then toggle on/off notifications based on whether or not you want all mail updates or only VIPs

Save Your Battery Tip #7: Deactivate Wrist Raise
When you raise your wrist under default conditions with the Apple Watch, the screen lights up. From a practical perspective, this makes sense, since you typically only raise your wrist with a watch when you're checking the time -- or in the case of a smart device, checking notifications or messages. However, let’s consider what’s actually going on under the proverbial hood here. First, the hardware has to detect the wrist-raise motion. Then that hardware has to communicate with the software that the wrist-raise has happened, and the software has to check for any notifications to display in addition to the time. Then that information is communicated to the display hardware to show the user what’s happening.

Do it enough and it can drain power. A wrist raise can happen when you don’t even mean it, like when you’re reaching for something or waving hello. Turning of Wrist Raise deactivates that type of detection, and instead simply uses a face tap to unlock the device and display notifications and the time. Some people may even prefer this as a general configuration, but at the very least, it’s a sensible way to save power over a cool-but-unnecessary feature. It should be noted that watchOS 3.2 included a beta version of Theater Mode. Theater Mode is similar to Do Not Disturb mode except it also disables the display upon arm movement. Thus, by using Theater Mode, you'll be able to limit the amount of times the display lights up, even if you move around a bit.

Save Your Battery Tip #8: Have a Boring Watch
Some displays use power regardless of what color a pixel is displaying. The Apple Watch uses AMOLED technology on both Series 1 and Series 2 models. What makes this so special? In terms of power saving options, this is one of the simplest. With this type of display technology, black pixels use far less power than colored pixels. So how does this help you save power on your Apple Watch? There are a few different strategies for taking advantage of this hardware configuration. The most obvious one is to have streamlined and mostly black watch face. The fewer the pixels featuring colors or white lines, the better. Second, consider the visual accoutrements that are standard in the Apple Watch. Transparencies creates a see-through look to your user interface, and this can be reduced or eliminated completely. UI Animations refer to the small bits of flare that occur when swiping or transitioning between states. These use more pixel power and they also eat up processing power to run them. These settings can be accessed via the Apple Watch in the iPhone.

Save Your Battery Tip #9: Reboot When Necessary
Sometimes, our smart devices just seem to be running amuck when it comes to power. This can happen whether it’s the Apple Watch, a smartphone, tablet, or any other device that runs an operating system and a number of apps in the background. Saying “reboot your system” is cliché, but in many cases, it’s true. If your device is burning up power at a strangely high rate, the best thing to do is to simply reboot it. It may be a bug in an existing device or a process that went off the rails, but regardless, a fresh start should restore things to the way you set up the configuration -- and that should give you a clean slate for power usage.

Save Your Battery Tip #10: Disable SOS Calls
This final one is a practical choice on your end. Are you in a place where you think you won’t need to make an emergency call? Or perhaps you feel the emergency SOS call feature is a little bit of overkill? If the answer is yes to either question, then congratulations -- you’ve found a very easy way to help save your battery power. Simply open up the Apple Watch app on your iPhone and go to the General settings menu, then Emergency SOS. From here, you can simply toggle it on or off. The result is extended battery life, though remember what you’re trading it for. It’s one of those things where it’s only needed one time in a million, but it’s a personal decision whether even that microscopic chance is an important enough safety factor for you to use it.

Conclusion: It is Possible to Extend the Life of Your Watch’s Battery
The battery life of the Apple Watch has been on everyone's mind since the device launched. Even with Series 2's debut, there were still plenty of rumors and speculation abound regarding what might be done to extend the device's battery life. It's early 2017, and by all accounts, the Apple Watch Series 3 should land some months from now, probably in September of this year. Early reports indicate that battery life is indeed on the developer's mind. One insider report noted that Apple was going to use a new OLED display that was thinner and more power efficient. Another report simply noted that battery life was at the forefront of development goals, which could impact everything from that display to the way watchOS handles background updates and notifications.