Apple Watch series 5 battery life

As I mentioned earlier, my watch 5 battery has been down to 12-15% by bedtime. Searching for some cause of this, I found Background App Refresh was turned on. Just as an experiment, I turned it and AOD off. Last night when I went to be later than usual, my watch 5 was still showing 42%. Clearly this is only one data point, and I should have changed only one variable, but to me it’s encouraging to see this number for the first time. Today I’ll turn AOD back on and see what happens.

Turn off the noise monitoring.

Try turning Background App Refresh totally off

I am very disappointed in the S5 battery life compared to S4. I have been playing with different faces. It has been around 50% of what I normally get. Tomorrow, I am going to try to disable the always on feature and see if that is what the different is. Betting it is. If it is, then the only difference is a compass in the new hardware.

I always buy the latest hardware from Apple (sort of an addiction). To be honest, this is probably going to be the first apple product that I am going to send back and just stick with my Apple Watch Series 4.

This morning I turned off the always on display and noise monitoring. Watch has been on battery for 90 mins and used work used workout app for a 45 minute outdoor walk. Just looked and watch is still at 100%. Yesterday I would have been at 85%.

let’s see if what today brings

tomorrow I may enable display and see if noise monitoring is the issue.

will decide on Friday if I am returning, especially if I have to turn off features.

It’s definitely not the noise app for me as I never turned it on. Been doing much better today with the aod off. Almost 12 hours and at 60%. I have the 44mm. My wife has the 40mm and her battery is at 64%. Seems it should be opposite. Same settings as mine. Only difference is she has a much simpler watch face with less complications.

Did similar test today. Turned noise and Always on to off. Consumption was about 2-3% per hour.

after 6 hours I turned the Always on back to ON. Consumption is 5-6 per hour.

Just wearing it on, few notifications. No workout, no music, no gps.

So if you disable the Watch 5 features, you will get the Watch 4 but for the price of 5. Yeah, a real deal, glad I traded my S4 already...

Every time you raise your wrist or the screen actively turns on that is considered Usage. So essentially even though you have not “used” your watch the screen has been fully on for 3 hours 24 minutes. Not AOD, that does not count towards “usage”. Make sense?

If you are within two weeks they’ll exchange (almost) without question (as long it’s not damaged etc). My first Apple Watch 5 got exchanged that way when I was having major issues with it. Perhaps you’ve fallen outside that period, in which case they explained to me it is a repair under warranty.

That is not good at all. Apple told me I'd have to send mine in for repair or as I'd bought it from a different retail store I had to go back to them and they replaced it without question.

My replaced watch 5 is much better than my first one and even seems to be even better after 6.1 update.

I have also bought a fabulous little keychain watch wireless charger to carry around with me in case I do run out of battery at any stage. I shouldn't have to but I feel much safer having it.

Excellent. It’s finally out. Yes this software update is what I’ve been using in beta. I get 24-30 hours from my S5. I have the non cellular version. Previously getting 12-16 hours from a charge. Hope it works for you too!

Crikey! That’s terrible. When I first installed the beta version of 6.1.1 the first couple of charge cycles were bad then it suddenly came good and has been ever since. Sorry I’ve got everyone’s hopes up. Mine is still getting 24-30. I have turned off a lot of app notifications and just run with a few key ones like email and messages. I thought that was causing a bit of a battery drain. I also go in from time to time and kill apps running in the background.

Turn off compass and sound Background App Refresh

I was getting 6-10 hours under WatchOS 6.1.1. Since I purchased my S5 only 14 days earlier, the Apple Store replaced it with a a new one. I now get 17-20 hours under WatchOS 6.1.1.

This may sound strange, but here's what I noticed. Yesterday morning I started with a full charge. Just a few hours later I was down to 70%. I charged it again, and tightened the strap a little. The battery life is greatly improved. Today I've had it on for 7 hours and I'm at 85%. Maybe intermittent contact with the sensor drains it?