Apple Watch Battery Is Replaceable, Has Three-Year Lifespan
An Apple spokesman confirmed to TechCrunch the “battery is replaceable”. Albeit, it’s not clear how much it will cost to send in your wearable to Apple to get it returned with a new cell in place. Update: We understand the lifecycle of the battery is around three years.
Bear in mind, “replaceable” and “user-replaceable” are two very different things, and Apple is merely confirming that, as with most of its products, you can have the battery swapped out (for a fee) once the thing goes kaput. I don’t know what to make of that three-year lifespan, though. Typically in the tech world, a battery is said to be functionally exhausted when its maximum charge capacity is depleted to 20 percent of the original limit. In the laptop world, this happens after a few hundred cycles, with battery replacement being necessary every four years or so. Of course, people won’t put up with an Apple Watch that needs to be charged every 3.5 hours (of standard — not heavy — use), so the replacement threshold on its tiny power plant probably comes quite a lot sooner. For something that’s charged and discharged on a daily basis, three years equates to nearly 1100 cycles. I don’t care what anyone says, that’s pretty impressive.
What all this means for the modularity of the rest of Apple Watch’s hardware, however, remains a big unknown.