Panic sweeps nerd nation over Apple Watch battery life
Tech Industry
You may need a spare charger for that Apple Watch.
I'm Bridget Carey, and this is your CNET update.
[MUSIC]
Folks, we need to talk about the Apple Watch.
I have some new that may be hard to hear.
It may even be hard to believe.
But Apple's first smart watch is not gonna be perfect.
I know everyone's salivating over the coming Apple watch in all its gold trimmed glory, but there's a possibility it could be plagued with the same problem of most smart watches, and that's battery life.
Although Apple has yet to reveal full battery life information about the watch.
Sources told the news site Nine to Five Mac that the battery life is falling short of Apples goal to have it work for nineteen hours of mixed active and passive use but, how much shorter is unknown.
The report says it may just last two and a half hours with heavy app use.
That's like if you can't stop checking apps.
And four hours for exercise tracking.
We won't know for sure until we put it through battery tests when it comes out in the spring.
And I'm sure it won't be long before we start getting battery pack cuff accessories.
No, seriously, there are battery charger wristbands right now on Kickstarter.
In other mobile news U.S. carrier T Mobile is stirring things up again.
This time it involves your credit score.
When you see a commercial for a discounted or free smart phone, whether its T Mobile or another carrier you can only get that deal when you have a well qualifying credit score.
It's all in that itty bitty print on those commercials.
Well T-Mobile says more than half of Americans don't have a credit score that's good enough to get the deals.
And those folks have to pay more up front and over time.
Or go pre-paid.
But let's say you didn't have good credit, but you still signed up for T-Mobile, well if you paid your bills on time for a year, you get upgraded, and you can qualify for all the best offers without a credit check.
Like a loyalty thank you of sorts T-Mobile is a forth place carrier but, with all these recent wild promotions like data roll over it's gaining customers and it is on the path to passing Sprint.
T-Mobile is growing so fast that on Friday Sprint began targeting T-Mobile.
Sprint has a new promotion that promises to pay T-Mobile customers $200 for a smartphone trade in, plus up to $350 to cover switching costs.
In other news, car makers are paving the way for more high tech cars.
Ford just opened a research lab in Silicon Valley with a focus on improving car internet connections and self driving vehicles.
But before we get to those self driving cars, other car makers are focused on getting us to buy electric vehicles.
BMW and Volkswagen partnered with the company Charge Point to build at least 100 more charging stations along the east and west coast.
Which can get a car to 80% power in less than 30 minutes.
That's your tech news update.
There's always more at cnet.com.
From our studios in New York, I'm Bridget Carey.
[MUSIC]
