Apple cuts Watch features to save battery life, developers say

If you're wearing your smartwatch all of the time you want it to go at least a full day before it needs a recharge but reports from behind the scenes in Cupertino have suggested the Apple Watch is struggling to meet this target.

A new report from Business Insider says that Apple is in fact cutting down on some software features to avoid overloading the smartwatch's battery too much. The developers BI spoke to say that their hands are tied to a certain extent - at least for the time being.

"Apple is only going to allow developers to do the basic stuff to just get the Apple Watch out there, because either it's not ready, or they don't know what the implications of something like this could be," said Sumit Mehra, CTO of app studio Y Media Labs.

Take your time, developers

Having the sensors running non-stop, for example, would very quickly drain the Apple Watch battery, so Apple doesn't want to give developers free rein just yet. The ability to create standalone Apple Watch apps is coming later in the year, but for now developers can only build iPhone apps with added Apple Watch compatibility.

"We had a vision of what we'd like to achieve, and in the end we had to get rid of lots of features because they just weren't possible in the current state of WatchKit," commented Markiyan Matsekh, another of the app developers whom Business Insider contacted.

For Apple, giving end users a smartwatch that makes it through the day is obviously worth limiting what developers can do, at least while the Apple Watch finds its feet. We should hear a lot more about the eagerly anticipated device at the official launch event on Monday.

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