The Apple Watch will offer a low power, “time only” mode to help conserve battery strength, says a new report from The New York Times.
With the exception of Pebble products, most current and upcoming smartwatches – including the Apple Watch – will last no more than a day on a single charge. To help mitigate this issue, Apple has reportedly developed a still unannounced software feature of the Apple Watch called Power Reserve, according to the New York Times.
The feature reportedly cuts power to all non-essential functions, displaying only the time, helping the watch conserve precious battery power in situations where a user may not have access to a charger. Apple has previously said that the Apple Watch’s battery will only last a “normal day,” with a nightly recharge required.
The report also indicates that Apple’s decision to omit some advanced health tracking features actually occurred over 18 months ago, and was not, as some reports have indicated, a last minute decision. Early experiments with sensors that tracked such factors as blood pressure and stress are said to have proved unreliable, leading to the decision to remove the sensors from the first generation of the device.
The Times report also delves into the challenges Apple faced during the development of the Apple Watch – including the loss of key engineers to other companies, such as the Google-owned Nest home automation company – and the ways Apple kept a lid on secrecy while deploying test models of their new device, even going so far as to creating dummy casings for the devices, including some that resembled Samsung smartwatches.
Apple has scheduled a media event for March 9th, where it is expected Apple will reveal more details about their new smartwatch.
