Battery Indicator Incorrect on Series 5 Apple Watch

I power cycled the watch and it seemed to work mostly fine for about a week. The battery drained normally, but the power save function would not kick on at 10%. It just drained until it died. This morning it's back to being stuck at 100% for 10 hours and then dying at 40%. Guess I'll just keep charging it when it drops below 50% for the near term.

I have this issues too.

My series 5 (bought last November) started doing this a few weeks ago I think after the recent IOS update.. My watch would shut down when the battery indicator still had 40-60% left. When put on charger it would turn back on with the 40-60% battery, however if I removed it from the charger would immediately turn back off. I had to leave it on the charger for a while to be able to use it. My battery would very rarely be at 100% when fully charged, but would remain at 99%.

I called apple support and they did diagnostics and I think they said the battery looked fine but that the graph was odd as it was a linear line.

They had me unpair the watch and set it up as new (not from a back up). I did this but it has not resolved my issue. Apple support was supposed to call me back on Friday but no one did. This is so frustrating as I cannot trust the indicator level and am never sure when it needs charging or will turn off. I do not use my watch for much except a workout every other day.

This is my first apple watch and I am extremely disappointed.

It looks like Apple is preparing to release watchOS 6.2.8 this coming week (devs have received the Golden Master July 10/20). Maybe wait to try that. No idea if it fixes the issue, but may be worth a try before installing the beta of 7.

Hello,

Perhaps give it a month - my watch issues are now resolved. I've recently posted to others that I believe it is an indexing issue (microsoft called it defragmentation) and the iPhone has the same issue after some updates and this has been going on for years. Another "forum contributor" said that the iPhone issue was indexing and it is a battery hog for about a month. My guess is if computers go through indexing and iPhones, why not Apple Watch. Like I mentioned, my watch issues are gone after a month and all is good. My only wish is that apple told their people and us what to expect when indexing occurs - if that's what is in fact going on.

Yesterday, it showed 100% throughout most of the day, then dropped to 51% in the evening, but it did make it through the day. Typically when I put it in the charger at night, when it works correctly, it would be between 30% and 45%.

This morning after wearing it for a few hours, it still showed 100%. I did I force restart and when it powered back on, it showed 10% charge, and wanted to go into power saving mode. Did another force restart, this time when it powered on it was back to 100%. It died around 5:30 PM, with about 50% of a charge showing. At least that was what it showed while on the charger as soon as it had enough charge to come back on.

You're not alone. My wife and I each have a Series 5 and one or the other has the same problem. None of the troubleshooting steps work (just hard reset it and paired/unpaired it for the 6th time today). Just one day it starts working right again. A search online for this issue shows that it has been a problem for years. Personal opinion: there is a long standing software issue that Apple can't identify.

Hello folks. I've been reading this thread. I bought my 5 in Feb. This same exact problem you are describing in this thread started with me AFTER I upgraded to Watch OS7. I have done most of the things described in this thread except resetting back to factory settings and starting over. Not sure I want to lose all my activity data. Apple needs to fix this. This is a HUGE problem for a lot of people. I was thinking of upgrading to the 6 series but now I'm second guessing that. This is frustrating.

Yesterday's update seemed to have resolved the issue. My watch operated through the evening with no issue and it's been 24 hours since my last full charge. Waiting for day 2's results.

The watch is not defective. This is a software issue. It will be fixed in WatchOS 7. In the interim just follow the workaround a few posts back.

Although I continue to have the issue with watchOS 7. Don’t think it is completely resolved just yet. If you are testing, be sure to submit feedback regarding this issue.

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 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.

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]

I’ve been trying your power down workaround for about a week now, but it only seemed to work once (the first time). Ever since, it just stays stuck at 100% (or 99%) until it suddenly dies with no charge at all, so I’ve gotten in the habit of charging it for an hour in the morning, an hour in the late afternoon, and an hour before going to bed, just to be sure it doesn’t die. So irritating!

I spent two hours with Apple Support on Saturday trying to get this resolved—including multiple unpairings/re-pairings—and was ultimately told I had to mail it in or take it to a shop to be repaired (not an Apple Store, of course, since they are all closed). But it turns out the store they referred me to told me Apple won’t allow them to do in-store repairs—I’d have to make a 40-minute drive to drop it off so they could ship it back to Apple (uh, I can just do that myself!).

Anyway, sorry for the digression—bottom line, I tested your suggested approach and it didn’t solve it for me.