It has a bigger battery but it mostly evens out due to the larger screen.

I think Apple is very keen to ensure that you’re able to tell when someone’s wearing an Apple Watch, and they’re happy with the general silhouette of the watch as a result.

Personally my guess is there will be a redesign of some kind next year, but I think the folks who are holding out for it or excited about it will be disappointed by how Apple Watch-y it remains. Think less iPhone 8->iPhone X, more iPhone 14->iPhone 15. And that will include the Watch remaining square and, subsequently, probably the bands staying cross-compatible(barring some other reason to change the design I’d be unaware of, like saving on internal space or something).

I’d expect the 16 series will improve on battery life and thermals in general, but honestly anyone holding out hope for something radically different is almost certain to be disappointed for a very long time.

Smartphone batteries are more than sufficient for the vast majority people’s uses. The 15 Pro has a battery which is apparently nearly the worst out of the 14/15 series line up…and I’m still hovering around 40-50% after 5 hours of use, depending on exactly what I was doing that day. That’s around 8-10 hours of battery life total.

If I’m spending enough time on my phone for this to be a problem, even after 3 years of degradation, I probably have larger issues with my life than phone battery.

Meanwhile, even a battery that triples this battery life is going to still just get charged daily because it’s too short to charge on a regular, easily remembered schedule.

There’s a reason why Apple has, and will continue to, favor focusing their battery improvements on fueling new features first before allowing them to trickle down to actual battery life. We’re at a point where battery life isn’t realistically a concern for the average user, and is a more niche feature that most of the stuff they might want to spend that extra battery life on.

It’s going to take a small revolution in battery technology for us to see major leaps in how long these devices last.

Because batteries, like everything, contain mass and a phone that thick and stuffed with batteries would be shredded for feeling like a brick.

Not trying to be snarky, but are you sure there isn’t something wrong with your phone’s battery, or have you not updated iOS?

5 hours usually leaves me with 40-50% depending exactly on what I did that day.

Probably just get a different, more breathable band. You can’t exactly control how much your body excretes sweat.

Personally I don’t sweat from just wearing it. If I exercise, sure, but I just run it and my wrist under the tap. Watch is fine, it’s made to be water resistant.

It’s not just about being “obsessed” with closing rings. The whole concept of rings is to encourage and remind you to keep a regular exercise and movement routine, and it falls apart when you can’t schedule rest days into the system.

You either need to set the exercise goal so low that it’s rendered perfunctory, or you have to start pretending the days you didn’t exercise actually don’t count and begin ignoring the notifications that remind you you’re falling behind for the day/week(because you actually aren’t). Either way, the system becomes pretty useless very quickly.

That rest days still aren’t accounted for in the rings system after all these years is insane, and has rendered it entirely irrelevant to me as someone whose joints can’t take meaningful exercise every single day(thanks, hypermobility!). It could have been a neat system to help me keep track of my exercise, otherwise.