lklawitter
Level 1 (1 points)

Q: Apple Watch eats iPhone 6's battery

hi,

 

after pairing my Apple Watch with my iPhone 6, I've noticed dramatic reduction in battery life. The iPhone only lasts ca 3 hours(!) from full charge and the watch only a little longer.

The iPhone would get uncomfortably warm in the process and the battery drain is so bad it even drains faster than a 2.1A external battery pack can re-charge (meaning the iPhone's battery would still go down while being plugged into the battery pack). All this happens while hardly using the watch at all.

 

I've suspected a rogue 3rd party app using lots of Bluetooth and CPU time, so I un-paired and re-paired the watch and this time only installed the native apps, not a single 3rd party app.

The result is only marginally better.

 

The only way of stopping the battery drain is to put both devices into airplane mode, which obviously defies the object of a smart watch.

Furthermore apps on the watch (calendar for example) take very long to load and sometimes don't show a result at all before crashing.

 

I can only assume that my experience is a freakish edge case, otherwise the internet would be ablaze with comments. Nevertheless, has anybody got an idea why this might be happening and what I could do next? (I'll probably factory reset my iPhone tonight and see what happens then)

Posted on Apr 27, 2015 7:03 AM

by lklawitter,Solvedanswer
lklawitter lklawitter
Level 1 (1 points)
A:

Update:

 

After a long but unsuccessful visit to the Apple Store (the Genius agreed with me that something was fundamentally wrong with my Watch, but they don't have any replacement stock, so the Watch would have to be returned via the online store - something I could have initiated from the comfort of my home, sparing me the 1.5hrs drive to the store...), I decided to look into some of the other odd bahaviours my Watch had shown, which I had so far put down to being side effects of the main problem which I suspected to be a defect on the Bluetooth Side.

I've consistently had issues getting the watch unlocked. Sometimes it would take me an hour of restarting either device until finally the blue padlock symbol would disappear.

So when I found this thread Problem Setting Passcode on Apple Watch, I thought why not give it a try with a factory reset iPhone without the profiles for my corporate exchange server and security policy installed and hey presto - that solved it!

 

I've been using the watch all day and it behaves perfectly normal. It's responsive and most of all the battery is still at 78% after almost 6 hours of use! Yay!

 

So I'll be very brave now and install the corporate profiles, as one of the other threads seemed to imply that the passcode would work as long as it is set up before the profiles are installed. Let's see...

Posted on May 2, 2015 7:01 AM

Close
lklawitter

Q: Apple Watch eats iPhone 6's battery

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

Page 1 Next

  • by SRP11,

    SRP11 SRP11 Apr 27, 2015 7:16 AM in response to lklawitter
    Level 1 (40 points)
    Apr 27, 2015 7:16 AM in response to lklawitter

    That does seem weird.  I would be normal to see a small amount of battery drain, due to them using Bluetooth, but that drastic change shouldn't be normal on devices like these. Please update us after the reset tonight.

     

    Hope I Helped,

    Sam Page

  • by T.Dev,Helpful

    T.Dev T.Dev Apr 27, 2015 8:21 AM in response to SRP11
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Apr 27, 2015 8:21 AM in response to SRP11

    Hi I have exactly the same issue but not as drastic I have a new 6+ usually getting 2 days Battery life I am now down to much less than 1 day on the phone but the watch seems to give what it is supposed to.

    this is what I think I will try.

    Delete all but native apps as I think they are active on the phone even when not required.

    Log out and log in to iCloud this solves many problems.

    Re-pair the watch and phone. 

    Turn off whatever I can on the native software (location services etc) and see if it makes a difference.

     

    Dev

  • by lklawitter,

    lklawitter lklawitter Apr 27, 2015 8:47 AM in response to T.Dev
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Apr 27, 2015 8:47 AM in response to T.Dev

    I've read elsewhere about the 6+'s battery life dropping to less then a day.

     

    The steps you are planning to do sound sensible. Apart from logging out of iCloud I've done all of them my end as well.

    Getting rid of the non-native apps at first looked like it did the trick, the watch seemed subjectively more responsive, but it didn't really solve my battery drain issue. 1 hour 45 min after the re-pairing w/o any synced non-native apps both devices had lost another 30% of battery life, so slightly better than before, but nowhere near normal. Having neither my watch nor my iPhone last beyond lunchtime from fully charged at 7am is a bit embarrassing and I'm sure I won't hear the end of it from my non-Apple colleagues...

  • by T.Dev,

    T.Dev T.Dev Apr 27, 2015 9:08 AM in response to lklawitter
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Apr 27, 2015 9:08 AM in response to lklawitter

    Ok thanks for that I won't bother logging out of iCloud if you have tried it and it made no difference. i am also going to check my phones usage to see if that reveals anything I can't at the moment as my phone is flat. Don't worry about your non apple friends they don't have lives .    

  • by lklawitter,

    lklawitter lklawitter Apr 27, 2015 10:14 AM in response to T.Dev
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Apr 27, 2015 10:14 AM in response to T.Dev

    ah, sorry, I didn't mean to say logging out of iCloud won't work, I meant I've not tried it.

    Backing up my iPhone now and going to wipe it soon. If that doesn't work it's off to the Genius Bar...

  • by lklawitter,

    lklawitter lklawitter Apr 28, 2015 1:56 AM in response to SRP11
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Apr 28, 2015 1:56 AM in response to SRP11

    so, I've reset my iPhone and set it up as a new device (not restoring from backup), hoping to eliminate all possible side effects caused on the iPhone side of things.

    When pairing the watch to the phone I only installed native apps, no 3rd party, but left all other settings in default.

    I wasn't even too worried about the fact that the iPhone went down from fully charged to 62% and the Apple Watch to 56% within 2 hours as I gave them credit for having to sync the apps first and I assumed this would consume a lot of energy with Bluetooth transferring large amounts of data.

    Being the irrepressible optimist that I am, I even didn't frown upon the calendar app seemingly taking forever to launch on the watch without showing any result and ultimately crashing (after taking so long to start that the screen saver would kick in several times), because I thought it might have to cache my (admittedly large amount of) calendar entries.

    But when I started using the watch in the morning, my optimism was quickly shattered. Here are my stats so far:

     

    • 05:50am: iPhone 100%, Apple Watch 100%
      • activities: 35 minutes of excercise using the workout app on the watch and podcast on the iPhone
    • 08:00am: iPhone 52%, Apple Watch 58%
      • force quit the Apple Watch app on the iPhone
      • Charged the iPhone for 30 mins through the USB socket in the car while driving into work
      • activities: none on the Apple Watch, Podcast on the iPhone
    • 08:30am: iPhone 43% (despite charging!), Apple Watch 46%
      • activities: none
    • 09:30am: iPhone 31% Apple Watch 28%
      • activities: none on the APple Watch, BA app on the iPhone
    • 10:00am iPhone 11%, Apple Watch 19%

     

    so I'm going to put both devices on charge and I'm not even in the office for more than 1.5 hours...

     

    I guess I'll book an appointment at the Genius bar now (maybe phone support first)...

  • by nick101,

    nick101 nick101 Apr 28, 2015 2:29 AM in response to lklawitter
    Level 5 (5,103 points)
    Apr 28, 2015 2:29 AM in response to lklawitter

    Yes - contact support. There's clearly something very very wrong here

  • by lklawitter,

    lklawitter lklawitter Apr 28, 2015 3:56 AM in response to nick101
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Apr 28, 2015 3:56 AM in response to nick101

    So, I just got off the phone with Apple Support and they basically asked me to go through all the tings I had already done

    • un-paring and re-paring the watch
    • leaving all third party apps off for the time being
    • re-setting the iPhone (as in setting up as new iPhone, not restoring from backup)
    • checking battery consumption per app on the iPhone (Settings>Usage>Battery Usage), which did not show any obvious battery hogs. I've read elsewhere that some users had the Apple Watch app use disproportionate amounts of battery life, so force quitting it solved it for them. Doesn't seem to be the root cause in my case:

         IMG_0003.PNG

     

    So we agreed that something seems to be fundamentally wrong with - most likely the Apple Watch as the phone behaves normally when the watch is not paired.

    So I've booked an appointment at my local Apple Store on Friday and we'll see how it goes...

    In the meantime I'll do some battery life tests with Bluetooth switched off on the iPhone and the Apple  Watch in Airplane mode hoping to confirm my assumption that the problem is entirely Bluetooth related.

  • by lklawitter,Solvedanswer

    lklawitter lklawitter May 2, 2015 7:01 AM in response to lklawitter
    Level 1 (1 points)
    May 2, 2015 7:01 AM in response to lklawitter

    Update:

     

    After a long but unsuccessful visit to the Apple Store (the Genius agreed with me that something was fundamentally wrong with my Watch, but they don't have any replacement stock, so the Watch would have to be returned via the online store - something I could have initiated from the comfort of my home, sparing me the 1.5hrs drive to the store...), I decided to look into some of the other odd bahaviours my Watch had shown, which I had so far put down to being side effects of the main problem which I suspected to be a defect on the Bluetooth Side.

    I've consistently had issues getting the watch unlocked. Sometimes it would take me an hour of restarting either device until finally the blue padlock symbol would disappear.

    So when I found this thread Problem Setting Passcode on Apple Watch, I thought why not give it a try with a factory reset iPhone without the profiles for my corporate exchange server and security policy installed and hey presto - that solved it!

     

    I've been using the watch all day and it behaves perfectly normal. It's responsive and most of all the battery is still at 78% after almost 6 hours of use! Yay!

     

    So I'll be very brave now and install the corporate profiles, as one of the other threads seemed to imply that the passcode would work as long as it is set up before the profiles are installed. Let's see...

  • by nick101,

    nick101 nick101 May 2, 2015 7:32 AM in response to lklawitter
    Level 5 (5,103 points)
    May 2, 2015 7:32 AM in response to lklawitter

    The corporate profile thing appears to be a definite issue. According to a number of users, removing the profile, setting the passcode and reinstalling works, so you should be OK to take the next step.

     

    I suppose the battery issue is cause by the watch and phone trying time after time to connect using the profile and failing.

     

    Anyway - fingers crossed it's resolved now

  • by lklawitter,

    lklawitter lklawitter May 2, 2015 10:36 AM in response to nick101
    Level 1 (1 points)
    May 2, 2015 10:36 AM in response to nick101

    Unfortunately as soon as I had installed my corporate security profiles, the old behaviour started again - unlocking takes countless attempts, apps load and operate sluggishly and the battery drains like there is no tomorrow.

    Oh well, here's hoping that the next Watch OS and iOS updates will fix this.

  • by Dolceexte,

    Dolceexte Dolceexte Jun 21, 2015 11:14 AM in response to lklawitter
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 21, 2015 11:14 AM in response to lklawitter

    I have been troubleshooting this as well.  Our corporate software is Mobileiron.  I have replaced my Apple Watch once, they switched my iPhone 6 2x during this adventure.  Not having fun with it.  wiped both devices and didn't install mobileiron, tremendous improvement.  Not sure what to do now...wrote Apple.  Tried not pushing or fetching emails and calendars.  Phone and watch would reboot time to time.

  • by AMSMEX,

    AMSMEX AMSMEX Jul 22, 2015 8:51 PM in response to lklawitter
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 22, 2015 8:51 PM in response to lklawitter

    This weekend I finally received my Apple Watch. After using it for 3 days I wasn’t as excited as I opened the box. The battery only last for max 6 hours same as my company iPhone. After searching for the cause of this problem I found this post. I am sure that I have the same issue and I was wondering if you already found a solution?

  • by permoeng,

    permoeng permoeng Aug 4, 2015 1:58 AM in response to lklawitter
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 4, 2015 1:58 AM in response to lklawitter

    Same issue here. The Watch's battery only lasts about 6 hrs, and my iPhone 6 needs to be recharged every afternoon. Took the Watch of the charger at 7am at 100% and now less then 4 hrs later its down to 22%. If not charged it will die around lunch.

     

    I have a corporate profile on my iPhone as well, but don't really want to uninstall it either. That said, I'll leave the company Oct 1, so it might just resolve itself. But until then, the Watch is pretty much useless!

Page 1 Next