Apple watch series 4 battery drain about 15% per hour without any active app

My initial thought was that the new apple watch has a reduced refresh rate for "always on" and the software was forcing earlier watches to somehow keep refreshing but not at the 1hz per second. That should be a simple enough patch for Apple to ship but I'm always suspicious of these new releases where they bank on users throwing up their hands and just upgrading their device rather than waiting for a fix.

Since that's out of my hands I'm trying to delete all the battery suck apps like walkie talkie and, more importantly, the new noise level app. That one is always listening so it's gotta be draining the battery.

As per apple, the watch gets connected to your iphone either through Bluetooth, wifi or cellular connectivity.

So if your phone is not nearby and the watch cannot get connected through Bluetooth (the most preferred mode for connectivity and battery saving mode), it will automatically search for wifi network and connect your watch to your iphone through wifi. If even wifi is not available, then it’s connected through your cellular network on the watch if its activated.

what i have seen is, even if i turn off the wifi, the watch gets connected automatically over wifi once it looses Bluetooth connectivity.

also apple lists the following for automatic wifi connectivity.

So all in all, theres no way to switch off the wifi permanently unless apple realizes this and resolves this through an update.

And for the same reason i think my same series 4 watch but only gps version has longer battery life than the cellular version as cellular version keeps switching between wifi and Bluetooth.

Let me know what you guys think of this

Hi

I am following up this issue now since a while again. I have had the same problem with my watch (4) some time ago, lets say starting 2 or 3 months after I bought it and trying to figure out what could be the reason for this fast battery draining. After following many hints here, do this or do that, only after reset seemingly the problem was miraculously solved. I made a backup for the watch and everything was then fine, I guess there was as well an update at the same time. My watch is now working fine and the battery even after a day of many activities is running down only to 10 or 15% after 16 or even 18 hours. I like this watch and it is a very good motivator for me to be active and to follow my activity goals, great done by Apple.

Nevertheless, it cannot be that the most expensive watch of this kind is being discussed for things I really do not understand. It is a pity that we are discussing a simple matter, fast draining of battery, which is essential for ANY such device and it cannot be that when you are somewhere out of home that you need to recharge your watch in the middle of the day in the middle of the desert. We are becoming a prisoner of the battery life circle of the watch?

It can also not be that we are discussing here how to solve an Apple bug by switching off this and that to extend the daily life time of the watch, which is designed for using many other apps and as well is designed to run either on bluetooth, GPS or Cellular. Again, I like this watch and it is a good motivator buy I guess after 2 more years when the watch needs to be replaced I will go for another brand where I can expect a better battery life and maybe one day at least a solar supporting cell to have the watch running for a couple of days without charging. It is a pity that Apple is providing us with a device, which causes this kind of endless discussion here.

Until 2019 since 2009 I was very much satisfied with the Apple products.

Since 2019 after I bought iPhone XS and Apple Watch Series 4, the experience with the Apple support and issues not being resolved I am very disappointed.

IPhone XS 256GB - Since the very first day, the pictures clicked on my are showing green dots, in the second week of the purchase I raised this issue with Apple but till this day they have not acknowledged the faulty camera or have come out with any solution. The only solution they have is that they will talk to you over the phone call for 1-2 hrs and ask you to run the diagnostics tests and after finding everything working fine they will suggest you to update your phone but the problem isn’t solved.

Apple watch series 4 - Until last week the battery would last for already 2-3 days. Since last one week the battery hardly lasts for 3-4 hrs max. Now the senior executive or representative has promised of some concrete solution as the diagnostics test this time also has found everything working alright. I will update this community/thread if I am about to find any meaningful solutions to my problems or the same thing happens like it happened with iPhone XS experience.

fingers crossed.

I suspect that future WatchOS updates will address, among other things, these battery issues. Agree...what you have there is a good workaround. Very manageable. I have done the same thing - my charger used to be in the bedroom but now it is right next to my iMac so it is easy for me to put it on the charger, if needed, whilst I am browsing FB, Apple Support Communities, eetc.