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

My case was finally escalated to a senior service rep or something. He had to send me a link that needed to be opened on my phone the link ended in "watchoslogging.mobileconfig" and I think the profile was called sysdiagnose or something similar. essentially its a profile added to your phone that takes snapshots of the watch's health and usage throughout the day. Be prepared to have to jump through all their basic and insulting questions geared toward getting you to say that your situation isn't abnormal. Such questions include "well, how much battery life do you expect the watch to have?" "You know hat using apps and texting shortens battery life?" I just kept repeating that I expect a watch in pristine condition and less than a year old to last more than 5 hours.

I agree. There are so many possibilities with such situations that the standard checklists need to be applied by customer support. Be helpful and follow all through. If the condition still exists they will eventually install the watch oslogging sw. Mine showed an issue with this and was replaced. The replacement only loses 1-2% an hour and consistently lasts 2 days even with workouts and no turning stuff off. It definitely appears there is maybe a rogue batch of batteries.

When I bought my watch I was notified that update 5.3.1 was available. I did the upgrade right away. I have returned that watch and got a replacement that came with Os5.1.3. I did NOT update this watch and the battery life is phenomenal.

With light to moderate usage I am getting almost 48 hours between charges. Not sure if or how OS updates can be rolled back but I would suspect after reading that someone else is having the same issues I had that the OS 5.3.1 is a possible issue. I am not updating mine, it does everything I want and more as is on OS 5.1.3.

Apple please look into this.

What is solving for me is:

I take off the watch from the charger, use it for about 30 minutes, if I see that it is consuming more battery than normal (when the problem exists, in 30 minutes it consumes around 6% of battery) , I put it back to the charger and let it charge up to 100%, when I take his consumption is normal again and it works around two days.

I just came across an issue with Qi chargers that may be related to an Apple Watch losing power fast.

It appears that if an Apple Watch is too close to a Qi charger while it is charging it draws power from the watch!

Here is what I observed: I charged my Apple Watch about 15 inches from a Qi charging pad. The charge in my Apple Watch steadily increased. Once I put my iPhone on the Qi charging pad the power level of my Apple Watch DECREASED even though it was on it's charger. Once I took the phone of the Qi charging pad the watch charged again.

There must be some kind of power interference between the Qi charger and the Apple Watch itself or its charger.

As has been said before - this doesn’t affect all watches so it seems to be a hardware issue. Contact Apple support and follow their guidance. They need to test all scenarios before confirming. My replacement series 4 has no issues. I can leave noise level in the watch faces and still have 60% left after a full day of mixed activity. Persevere with support and allow them to test all scenarios. I ended up with logging sw on the watch for 24 hours before they confirmed it must be a Hardware issue.

After countless attempts to self remedy the issue I decided to send my watch in to Apple, they gave me a replacement and I’ve updated it to the latest WatchOS 6.1.1 . Been using the watch for 4 days and the battery issue seems to be fixed, the watch is now able to last for up 36 hours and beyond( didn’t push it) .

My suggestion is to send it back to Apple if you have tried almost every solution posted in this forum.

Had this problem as well. However, I had two IWatch 4s, one bought for my wife a few weeks after the other. My battery performance was in the 7/8 hour range, my wife’s 2 days! Went through all the recommendation to no avail. In case I had too many apps running I set mine up from scratch from a back-up of wife’s, but no improvement to battery life. Returned to Apple - no fault found. Long chat and on-line diagnostics still gave no problems, so returned for second time. Watch was replaced, set up with all my apps, and now runs for two days between recharges. Has to be a problem with some batteries! Overall, Apple were helpful, but reluctant to accept problem.

My Apple watch battery issue has resolved itself through a few changes that I made:

1. Deactivated "Wake Screen on Wrist Raise". That made a significant improvement.
2. Turned off the auto-update feature on an app that ports Apple Health data (from my running) to Garmin Connect and Strava. It now is set to manually update and that also improved battery life.

Try a reset by pressing in the crown and side button until you see the Apple logo, then release both.

Go to the Watch app on your phone. General> Background App Refresh> Turn off Background App Refresh. If you're using a face with complications, those complications will still update, but all of the other apps on the watch will not refresh in the background. I was having this issue with my Series 4, battery would only last about 11-12 hours with me doing almost nothing on it during that time. Battery life has improved since turning off Background App Refresh.

following up on my previous post

amazon sent me a replacement S4 - and I’m very happy to report it does not have the same issue as my first one just received a week ago. Battery on new one still 100% after an hour of no use - lost only ~10% after sitting overnight not on charger. So there is 100% something defective - whether it me hard or software - with my first one.

I had the very same problem and was ready to return the watch. My first generation watch which I had for years worked better!

For the past 4 nights I have reset my watch by pressing and holding the two buttons until the Apple logo appears then I charge it overnight. So far it’s held the charge all day and has over 60% battery when I charge it at bedtime.

Just updated to the latest watchOS 6 beta and after a short test, I’m at 3% / hour consumption. WAY better than the same experience that I’ve been having as many of the posts here. I’ll update tomorrow after a full day.

One thing I noticed when mine was doing this was that the usage and standby times in the "time since last full charge" were both exactly the same. Versus on my new watch usage is minimal compared to standby, essentially indicating that on the old watch something was stuck running in the background... despite doing everything to prevent it.