Apple Watch S4 Extreme Battery Drain (Caused by WatchOS, iOS or something else)?

I was having bad battery drain on my series 5 since it launched. I was getting 8 hours or so on a good day. I scoured the internet, contacted Apple support, and did everything I could think of, including get my watch replaced by Apple. No dice. I kind of just gave up and decided I'd have to charge my watch a couple times a day.

A couple weeks ago I was messing around with activity monitor on my MacBook and saw that a process called remindd had a really high CPU usage. There must be some kind of sync issue with my iCloud account and reminders. I turned off iCloud reminders on my iPhone and now my watch battery is performing beautifully. It lasts all day and well into a second one if I'm unable to charge it overnight (probably about 30 hours).

Might not be a fix for everyone, but thought I'd throw it out there in case anyone is desperate like I was.

I have been searching for the cause of this issue since WatchOS 6 was out and I had the drain problem ever since.

Neither Apple support, whom I talked to more than once, nor the apple service provider, who replaced my Watch S4 with a new one that also had the same problem when updated to OS 6.1, were able to pinpoint the problem or in apple support case even recognize that there is a problem to start with.

So I went into a detective mode to find out what causing this problem for myself, would you please help me by telling my what is your usage in terms of GB and whether or not it seems reasonable. To find this thing out go to Apple Watch App on your iPhone>General>Usage then at the top of the screen it should show how much you are using in terms of storage and then a list of apps each with its usage. In my case my watch was using up GB till my entire 12.1 GB on the watch was fully used.

Secondly, back out from the usage and go to the second category which is the diagnostic logs (General>Diagnostic Logs) tell me how many logs do you see and if there is one that is occurring every hour or so. I have diagnostic logs that are due to a bug type error which state RTLocation occurring every hour since I wear the watch, which I am assuming is real time location service. This might be due to Weather application and/or the complication on the watch.

Unfortunately, turning off location service either entirely or just location service for the weather application did not fix it for me.

The warning I get in the analytics logs look like the attached picture. You can also look at the jetsam events in the same area and look at the largest process when the event occurred.

On an iPad or iPhone it’s settings-privacy-analytics and improvements. On the watch it’s in settings under general.

If you look at your analytics for the watch? Do you have a lot of CPU threshold warnings for a process called trustedpeershelper

snapst3r - what watch face are you using? I went to a simpler watch face and my battery life has been great ever since. I tried re-adding weather after 6.1.1 for 1 day and there went my battery again. While I would like to have the weather like I always had prior to watchOs6, I would prefer having a battery that lasts all day...

I have been having similar issues with my Apple Watch S4 44mm for the last few weeks, probably associated with the 6.1.1 upgrade and 13.3 IOS upgrade on my phone (iPhone XS Max). I regularly get up around 6am and have my watch on by 7am and previously the battery would last until 9pm or 10pm that day. However, in the last few weeks I have been getting the 10% warning notice around 6pm and it was typically dead by 8pm. I hadn't changed any of the watch settings on the phone and I keep my watch installed apps to a minimum. The only change were the software upgrades.

I did the same unpair, wipe, reboot, etc tasks that are typical troubleshooting steps but nothing seems to have made a difference. However, Oalhammadi84 got me thinking about something and we will see how it works. I checked my usage and found that I had 3GB of music on my watch, which isn't unusual as I have a personal playlist or two on my watch for when I work out. However, when I checked my Music settings on my watch I saw that my playlists were no longer there and there were 4 standard playlists from Apple that update periodically. My suspicion and hope is that my battery drain is due to these playlists being updated on the watch regularly and causing a power drain as a result.

I have disabled all 4 playlists and have removed my personal playlists from the watch to see if it makes a difference in battery life. I will update this post in a few days and let you know how it goes.

Last night I unpaired again but paired to an iPhone SE I have as a spare. The SE’s sim was not active but it has a recent full iCloud backup of my XS Max software. Notifications and messaging works as normal.

I am wearing the same S4 watch at 16 hours with 43% charge remaining and I had a 90 minute workout. This is well over 300% greater battery life as when paired with my XS Max post recent updates.

I could go so far as to swap sims I guess but it doesn’t get me any closer to the solution I want.

basically

Removing the weather from my watch face significantly improved my battery life.

https://www.waldonell.com/thoughts/articles/did-i-just-fix-my-apple-watch-5-battery-life-issue

This is hardware version independent and this is what fixed my watch issue. Hope it helps someone else.

Update of my experience:

I upgraded to an 11 Pro Max.

Same watch, now 3x battery life

Theory based on my experience: a Pre-5 Series Watch when paired with iPhone X or XS and operating on Watch OS 6.x may perform excessive background operations of some sort reducing full charge runtime by ~50%. Sometimes a delay of 1 full use cycle was experienced before problem resumed (a head fake on each solution attempted). Pairing with a non-X series phone resolved the issue (both an iPhone SE and an iPhone 11 Pro Max)

Elsewhere in this thread I have a Usage screen grab showing Standby and Usage times. For me, this is the clearest early indicator of whether my watch battery is burning through at 3x rate. Within the first couple hours I can see if they are tracking in line and know how my watch is performing.

as for fixing it, I’ve had to three times scramble to google find the TrustedPeerSHelper library deletion and reset commands entered into terminal of my Mac, which is using my same iCloud account. I forget but I think it’s a Reddit thread they are in. Upon those steps and some additional reboots and re-pairings, I’m able to get back to normal (30+ hours) of watch life.

I have 2 watches and both entered into the Usage battery death cycle upon 6.1.3 upgrade so it is something that is triggered by either time or software install on specific iCloud accounts.

thanks, that's a new process to look at, though I haven't noticed it hogging resources in the past. The other one people scrutinize via Mac OS activity monitor is TrustedPeerHelper. Google for that and there's a command window reset path if need to.

I also tried sending my series 4 watch in and even bought a series 5 watch so now I have 2 hardware instances to experience with. After the TrustedPeer reset and several re-sync cycles I'd been getting back to 14+ hours on good days, with big gaps between USAGE and STANDBY in the screengrabs I posted back in January.

I had occasional disappointing days that kept me worried and checking but then I was reminded how bad it could be when I upgraded to 6.1.3 on my series 5 and it went back to 10 hour life for 2 days. I just did a re-sync and brought it back to 6.1.2 and all is good again. So much for Apple addressing whatever is causing trouble on mine.

Same exact issue with my wife's Apple Watch 5 (40 mm). Very short battery life and will not charge while the iPhone 11 Pro Max is on and connected to the watch. When I turn off the iPhone the Apple Watch will charge. I returned this first AW5 and purchased another - it has the same problem. I erased, reset and set up both devices as a new device (with and without using a backup) several times to no avail. I have tried several fixes from turning off Always-on to background refresh on the Apple Watch. I have 13 more days on the current AW5 before I have to return it for a refund. Started a refund for her current iPhone 11 Pro Max and ordered another to see if it is the iPhone itself since both AW5s I had paired with her iPhone have the same issue. I have the same setup with iPhone 11 Pro Max and AW5 with no issues (currently).