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What Smartwatches Do and Typical Battery Life

Author : Adrian October 02, 2025

smartwatch functions and battery life

Common functions

Smart wearable watches, commonly called smartwatches, provide multiple functions. Common features include:

  • Time and date display: The basic function of any watch, showing current time and date.
  • Health and activity tracking: Many smartwatches include heart rate monitoring, step counting, and sleep tracking to help users monitor health and activity. They can record heart rate trends, step count, calories burned, and sleep quality, delivering a set of health metrics useful for managing fitness and planning workouts.
  • Notifications: Smartwatches can connect to a phone or other device and notify users via vibration, sound, or screen alerts for incoming calls, messages, and social media updates, allowing users to stay informed without taking out their phone.
  • Phone integration: Some smartwatches can connect to a phone to view and send messages, answer calls, control music playback, and trigger the phone camera, enabling basic tasks without direct phone use.
  • Navigation and maps: Watches with built-in GPS can provide navigation and real-time mapping, which is useful for outdoor activities, travel, and exploring new areas.
  • Apps and personalization: Many smartwatches support installing apps and customizing watch faces and widgets, allowing users to tailor features to their needs.

Features vary by brand and model. Review product specifications and the user manual to understand the exact functions and operation before purchasing.

Battery life

Wearable watch battery life depends on several factors, including model, usage patterns, enabled features, and screen type. Typical battery life ranges from a few days to several weeks.

Simpler wearable watches that primarily display time and count steps tend to have longer battery life, often lasting several weeks or more. High-end smartwatches with continuous heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, GPS, and persistent Bluetooth connections typically last on the order of several days on a single charge.

Actual battery life varies by model and real-world usage. Check product specifications or perform hands-on testing to obtain accurate battery life estimates for a specific device.

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