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

2katmew, I agree with you 100% This watch was a Christmas gift from my husband and I am very disappointed with it. Since when does a watch this expensive last just 7 months! I have tried all of the suggestions mentioned everywhere, restarting, unpairing, pairing as a new phone, turning off background refresh, turning off heart monitor, turning off wake screen on wrist raise and absolutely nothing has helped. I even went to Genius Bar for assistance. The "genius" there did a diagnostic on the battery which indicated that the battery was fine and fully operational. He then checked that I had the latest system updates (of course I did!) and couldn't find any issues with my settings. He proceeded to "fix" my time zone under General Settings on my iPhone. Time Zone was set to New York, which is correct, however, when he deselected "Set Automatically", it changed to Chicago. He switched Chicago to New York and said this should fix my Watch issue! Really, I replied? Obviously, he did this just to close the issue and get me out of the store! His fix didn't work. (I knew it wouldn't.) So now I'm stuck with a watch that I have to charge 2 or 3 times a day and that doesn't even have all its wonderful features. What a bummer.

Hi I have this same issue and was wondering what OS you were using when the problem started? I specifically am interested to know if 5.3 helped you? 5.3 released July 22, a few days after your post. I can't remember if I was on 5.1 or 5.2 out of the box, but I ran on a lower version for a few days before realizing an update was available. And it seemed that after upgrading to 5.3 I started experiencing rapid battery drain. I leave for work at 8a with 100% and get home 10h later with a 10-13% remaining. Or, overnight I will just have my watch sitting next to my phone, both on. And I lose like 10% per hour just sitting idle. Already tried wiping/re-pairing the watch. Frustrating but I am wondering if watch os 6 will solve this

I recommend that if you have a twitter or instagram account you begin posting to @apple each day when your watch dies. Let's see how many people we can get to share the fact that something bigger is going on with these watches. This should not happen to a device intended to show time! My original apple watch still holds a charge longer than a day! I don't like the "well it's software so you have to wait till we make the software correct" answers. No, give me a watch that lasts all day. If it takes 10 returns, apple should give me a watch that works. Replace them with series 5's if those can last all day... Apple should have all the crappy "broken software" watches on hand testing them and when they fix the issue maybe sell them as reconditioned, don't make me do your testing. When it's the end of the day get me what i paid for, a watch for a whole day!

Same thing I experienced. How can you hope to replicate an issue in a just a few hours??? (see my response to 'linoccur' dated Nov 1.)

I know this is an old post, but if you still have the watch continue to pursue this. I want through this and the tech agreed that this was unacceptable and he authorized a replacement.

Of course I had the same issue as everyone else (otherwise I wouldn't be here). I had the watch replaced under warranty after taking it into the Apple store on 10/21 and them telling me nothing was wrong with it according to their tests. I pushed the issue since the watch was less than a year old and my wife's Series 2 was having no issues at all. They sent it for replacement stating that they didn't do anything in store with the watches. I received the replacement in the mail about 3 days later and for the first week or 2 everything was fine but over the past 4-5 days I have seen the problem show up randomly again. My usage today states that "Since Last Full Charge" I have "5 hours, 38 minutes" of Usage and "5 hours, 39 minutes" of standby. My watch has been off the charger for about 5 hours and 40 minutes total so I'm not sure how these numbers add up. I feel its a hardware issue with this model that has been exploited by WatchOS 6 because I did not have problems at all prior to upgrading my devices.

I have exactly what you have, I took the watch to my authorized service provider and was told after only 1 day of testing that the watch has a hardware malfunction, they failed to elaborate as to what is causing it or how was it affected.

I was issued a replacement which I paired and updated to WatchOS 6.1, and lo and behold the same drain is back. I took it back to the authorized service provider after two days where I got 15 hours on the first day and 9.5 hours on the second day. They were flabbergasted to see me back again with the same issue on a new watch.

They said that they will also run their tests on the new watch as well. What my guess is that OS 6.1 is causing a hardware issue on Watch series 4 which is not only stupid, it is a major concern about Apple updates.

I am an owner of many Apple products and have already put a plan in place to replace all those products with different brands by at least 2 years time. I am no longer going with Apple products, despite them being really good in hardware, the software quality is not only declining it is affecting the hardware as well.

I brought my Apple Watch series 4 to the Genius Bar today. I was told that there was no problem with my battery and basically to be on my way.

I told him that my watch has been useless for 6 months and considering how much I paid for the watch that I was going no were with it.

They brought it into their tech department and after 10 minutes had determined that there was more than likely a software issue and they needed to send the watch away to be looked at.

I to have been an apple loyal customer since it’s inception.

with all the problems with the watch and phones recently and an inherent lack of willingness to deal with existing customers and issues with apples software issues, I won’t be buying any more apples, think it’s time for an orange .

For what it is worth...

Yesterday my battery drain was once again significant. I un-paired and re-paired yesterday evening and that has once again resolved the issue.

Based on that I think it clearly shows this is a software and not hardware related. Hopefully a future WatchOS update will address this.

I have had exactly the same issue for weeks. Watch now going back to Apple for further tests - first time round this loop they stated ‘not a problem’., but battery drain remains exactly the same. Today, on-line diagnostics show no issue, so it is going back to them again. Have done countless resets and re-installs as new watch, but no change in battery drain. No other apps running and everything I can turn off has been. Still only c.7hrs usage from full battery, even when not on wrist! Very frustrating as my wife’s watch (same, but a little younger) runs without this problem. I have even set mine up using her restore - but mine still dies in seven hours, and hers runs for 2+ days! Can’t be software?? Mine is coupled with iPhone 11 Pro, hers with iPhone X. Both iPhones fully up to date. Don’t know what else to do, other than replace it.

I have had the same issue as everyone else it seems. I got the watch series 4 as a gift last May and have contacted Apple multiple times since receiving it. I like everyone seem to have exhausted all of my options. I have reset to original factory setting and restored and reset and set up as new. I have unpaired and repaired multiple times, talked and chatted with Apple many many times. I have gone to the store and sent in twice to have it repaired. While in store they ran a diagnostic check and it only had information from April of 2019 for 1 week. I didn't even own it at that time. Bought it from Best Buy in original packaging so should not have been used or refurbished. I am nearing my 1 year warranty and I feel like they are doing everything they can to just push me off until that is expired. The last person I spoke with at Apple Support said I could pay $69 or $79 for a replacement watch but that is not an answer to me. I should not have to pay anything for something that does not work when I have been trying since I received the watch to help me with the problem. Makes me very mad that it is a known issue but everyone I speak to never says anything about that. I agree this should have been handled better by the company of which I also have iphoneX and Ipad. Both kids have Iphones and now not sure I will stay with them also. VERY DISAPPOINTED by this entire process.

My S4 have same problem. 10% drain about one hour. No active app!

I had the same problem until I followed julieda’s suggestion on restarting. That worked like a charm. No problems at all since doing this a couple of weeks ago. Thank you julieda!

This exact same thing is happening to me since updating to 13.3.1 iOS. Apple watch would last up to two days, now only 6 hours.