For an iWatch to kick butt, Apple must innovate in batteries

(Credit: CNET)

If Apple is hard at work on an "iWatch," it will have to overcome battery issues bedeviling existing smartwatch makers.

This new crop of wrist devices has a lot more in common with smartphones than your old Timex. They have increasingly large displays, and can ferry over notifications and other data, acting as a second screen of sorts for your smartphone. For many of the latest models, that extra utility is not without a compromise: You've got to plug it in at the end of the day.

Charging a smartphone every day can be an annoyance, but most people are used to it. Watches are a different beast. Today's digital watches are designed much the same way they were 20 years ago, to last years at a time between battery replacements. That's held true for so long because they do little besides tell time.

While companies are doing all they can to reduce the power consumption of chips and screens, the fact remains that batteries haven't undergone the same technological sea change as other major portable device components. There haven't been the kind of advances in capacity that would let devices be used for days or even weeks on a single charge while keeping things small.

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