Battery Indicator Incorrect on Series 5 Apple Watch
The Issue
I am having the following problem with my Series 5 Apple Watch, purchased four months ago:
1. After a full charge, the battery charge indicator remains stuck at 100% for approximately 4-9 hours.
2. The battery charge indicator then begins to decrease.
3. When the battery charge indicator reaches approximately 15-33%, the watch powers down suddenly, with no low battery warning (which should be given at 10%).
In summary, the battery charge indicator is essentially never correct. Below are two graphs showing this behavior:
My Attempts to Work with Apple on the Issue
I have worked with Apple thorugh multiple channels, and have been unable to obtain a solution to this problem.
My efforts include the following:
1. On January 22nd I consulted the Apple Store about this issue. The watch was sent to the repair facility and they were unable to duplicate the issue. It was sent back to me.
2. The issue continued to occur after I received my watch back from Apple. On February 4th, I chatted online with Advisor #1, who opened a case about the matter.
3. At Advisor #1's request, I collected screenshots documenting the occurrence of the issue. I also triggered a logging procedure on my watch during the times that the issue occurred.
4. On February 7th I had phone conversation with Advisor #2. During that conversation, we uploaded the logs and screenshots documenting the issue, for analysis by the engineering team. I also provided other additional information.
5. On February 21st, Advisor #2 got in touch and told me that we would need to collect further logs from the watch. She provided a link to a mobile configuration profile for my phone, which would allow collection of more detailed logs from my watch.
6. We scheduled a call on February 24th to upload the logs. Advisor #2 stood me up for that call. After trying with her over several days to reschedule, we finally spoke around March 4th. We attempted to upload the detailed logs that had been collected, but the upload appeared to keep hanging. She indicated that she would call me back after this to figure out a way to upload the logs.
7. I have not been able to get in touch with Advisor #2 since then, despite reaching out by email and voicemail.
8. On March 13th, I spoke with Apple Support by phone to try to sort this out, since it seemed by that point that Samantha had disappeared. Advisor #3 took down my number and said that she would have someone call me back. No one did.
9. On March 16th, I contacted Apple Support again by chat, to try to remedy this issue. Advisor #4 scheduled a call for me to speak with Advisor #5 today, March 17th, to resolve the issue.
10. Today, I spoke with Advisor #5 and was told that the only possible approach he can offer is to ship the watch back to the repair center to see if they can diagnose the problem (i.e, back to Step #1 in this long process). He would not make any effort to upload any of the logs that I collected in Step #5 of this process (which failed to upload in Step #6). Based on my past experience with Apple repair, my expectation is that they will be unable to replicate the issue and that the watch will be sent back to me. In that case, the only recourse he could offer was to visit the Apple store again once it opens back up (after Covid-19 passes).
My Questions
I am honestly at an absolute loss about how to proceed here. This support experience has been worse than abysmal and very different from past support experiences with Apple. I have three questions:
1. If anyone from Apple is reading this, could you please intervene to resolve this? Ideally, I'd like to try new hardware and see if that solves the problem, as I've spent around 5-10 hours of my time dealing with this issue. That said, I'm also happy to work with you on further troubleshooting of this hardware, but I need a responsive and competent support team member on the other side to make that happen, and I don't feel that I've had that so far.
2. Has anyone reading this forum experienced this problem? If so, have you been able to solve it? And, if you've solved it, how?
3. Does anyone have any advice for resolving this problem with Apple? They seem completely unconcerned, and it has been dragging on for almost two months.
Thank you very much for any help!
Apple Watch
