Battery Indicator Incorrect on Series 5 Apple Watch

I bought a series 5 apple watch. It had the same problem. I took it to the Apple store and got a replacement, now the replacement is doing the same thing. I am wondering if I need another replacement. I am beginning to think that this a common problem with the series 5 and Apple has done nothing about it.

I have had the same issue for 2 weeks. The watch will read 99 or 100% all day. Today at 5 pm the battery read 83% and was dead 90 minutes later. Before this issue I could wear all day and night and wake up with 30 to 50% battery life, fully charge and repeat.

I got to speak with Apple Watch Level 2 and a very knowledgeable engineer explained it's an issue with the actual battery level of charge is not in sync with the Battery complication level of charge. It's software and will be fixed but for now the following procedure will get things in sync. It worked for both of my watches so there is a good chance it will work for you.

Procedure:

1) Charge watch for a minimum of 3 hrs (fully charge battery)

2) Remove watch from charger

3) Turn off watch (hold the side button (not crown) until the shutdown option appears and choose shutdown)

4) Wait a MINUMUM of 30 minutes. Even longer if practical.

5) Turn watch back on (press and hold the side button (not crown) until Apple symbol appears)

That's it.

For me it fixed the staying at 100% for hours then crashing with approx 60% battery level displayed.

You’re in luck. Apple opened their public beta today: https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/enroll

Just be warned, these are betas, so use at your own risk. (that being said, they’ve been very stable this year in my experience).

Same problem here: I’m doing far less with my Series 5 than I was with my Series 4 (I put it into theatre mode at night in an attempt to save battery life, I’ve set it not to wake based on my wrist movement so now I have to tap it to see what’s happening, and I’m exercising way less during the pandemic stay-at-home than I was before), but the battery is failing without warning and the battery indicator is absolutely useless. It typically says it’s at 99% (very rare to get to 100% for some odd reason) and doesn’t change for hours. I’ll charge it anyway, since I know it must have lost some charge, but then it will suddenly be completely dead 8 hours later with no warning and need a full charge.

I’m using nearly no apps. Breathe for 5 or 10 minutes at night. Pillow overnight with bare bones features. Workout from time to time. Every so often the timer. I turned off notifications for everything except texts and calls (and I receive calls rarely—averages less than once a day—and I typically make outgoing calls from a landline). I’ve tried rebooting multiple times. Once last week that seemed to solve the problem, but it was temporary.

• Paired with an iPhone XS
• Not using any beta software
• Initially no changes from Series 4 as far as usage, but now using *fewer* features/notifications (I never had this issue with my Series 4, although the whole reason I switched to the Series 5 was because the battery wasn’t lasting as long—I was having to charge twice a day—silly me. But the battery indicator on my Series 4 was working—I was just unhappy with how quickly the battery was discharging.)
• And as an extra whine, even though I paid for the GPS+cellular version, if I don’t have my iPhone on me, calls don’t seem to work and replies to texts fail to send. Should have saved the extra $100 and the $10/month. Sigh. [note: my Series 4 was also the GPS+cellular version]

Well I like have the Support logo but don’t have the viable fixing technical information that I need in order to support you with your problem so let me do some research and see if this can be resolved.

I've had the same issue... battery shows at 100% for a long time, and then dies when the watch is around 72%. When I plug it in, after restarting, the watch shows at 70+%. I'm charging it now, and it's remained at 99% for a long time. My guess is that the battery meter is off, and it needs to be recalibrated back to zero. I would think that a hard reset would do the trick, but I'm afraid it might be a full reset of the device, which is a pain to do and I hesitate. My watch seemed to start acting funny after the last update, but who knows. I wasn't tracking the behavior as closely as I am now. It's frustrating when it turns off unexpectedly when you think you have a pretty good charge still remaining.

Mine started doing this 2 weeks ago, I think. It is paired to an 11 Pro Max. Running beta OS on both. Did reset and paired as a new watch but no joy. It is a Nike Edition aluminum 44mm. Only 3rd party apps on watch are Honeywell and Yonomi. My guess is it’s not the beta. I think the battery is just losing its mind and charge. Never had an Apple hardware issue before.

Mine also paired to an iPhone 11 Max. I also have yonami (paired to a scale) so that’s interesting. I ordered a new watch from Apple that arrives tomorrow, and I am sending this one back to Best Buy. If the new one does the same thing maybe there is a correlation with the yonami app.. I also have never had a problem with Apple I have apple everything.

I’m having the same problem, which started about three weeks ago. (I’ve had the Series 5 for about 4 months, and it’s paired to an 11proMax.) I’ve finally gone to charging it whenever it fall below 60%, which seems to have stopped the “sudden shutoff” behavior, but is extremely inconvenient and not at all what I expect from Apple.

Update: My watch has stopped this erratic behavior. Not sure what caused it. One thing I'll note is that I did use the larger (iPad) charging block a few times in order to charge it faster, and I'm now back to a lower voltage charger. Not sure what "fixed" this issue, but happy that it is resolved.

I'm the guy with the beta iOS 11 Pro Max and Series 5 WatchOS beta. Because I have been making my monthly Apple Care payments of $3.99, my tech offered an express replacement for $69. I jumped at it. The watch arrived next day via Federal Distress so I could not have been happier. HOWEVER, in preparation for receiving a replacement, I decided to ditch the beta OS on my 11 Pro Max and instead did a full erase and new setup from scratch on my iPhone. Wouldn't you know it, between doing that and doing the same on my "problematic" series 5 watch, the watch battery started tracking "normally" again. Oops! So, in my case, at least, the issue was with one of the OS's- not with hardware. Of course, I think there are more "issues" now with some of the applications on the standard OS with regards to my iPhone, such as the badges not updating on Outlook, whether I use the standard Outlook for iOS or the beta. The pay off, however, besides the battery working on my watch as expected is that the Orbit application I have for my "glasses finder" now works so I can at least have some help locating them. The other payoff is just not having all of those silly apps running on my phone, though I am slowly putting back many of them. I hope this helps out some of you as I know this was a bothersome issue. I use the phone to track activity during the day and sleep at night, so I am constantly checking battery and figuring out a "still" time when I am awake when I can charge the phone. I sit at the computer for long stretches so that helps in this regard though is damaging in almost every other regard (It's the "new" smoking). I'm keeping an eye on this post so I'll try to respond if you have questions.

I finally got the fix for this problem. The person I got on the helpline asked me to unpair my watch, so that it would return to factory settings and then repair it with my phone using the latest backup so that I don’t lose my settings. I did that and it fixed the problem.