Yet another dying battery thread with Series 4 and update 6.2.1

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wealthychef Author

Level 1

74 points

Yet another dying battery thread with Series 4 and update 6.2.1

The Problem
- My watch has been running out of battery very very quickly. It always seems to get to about 41% then just shut off some time later. It acts like a dead battery. But when I put it on the charger, it starts up like it has no battery, then within a minute it says it has 41% charge again. I think it is this issue: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251266826
- What started as an issue of the battery draining to 41% has turned into one of being stuck on 100%, after numerous resets. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250840427
What I've tried:
- I've tried pairing and unpairing repeatedly.
  - Doesn't work.
- When re-pairing, I've tried restoring and setting up as a new phone.
- hard reset (hold two side buttons) reset my watch at least 10 times
- turned off and on my phone repeatedly,
- unpaired and re-paired the watch several times
- I've tried re-pairing with restored settings and also re-paired as a new watch

Details
- First, I un-paired and then re-paired the watch with phone.
  - I chose "restore from backup"
- I also just did 3 hard resets in a row on the watch per https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250840427?answerId=251597515022#251597515022
  - Later the author suggests repeating the reset multiple times, along with pairing/unpairing. This is nasty.
- Another thing I'm trying: turning the watch off for an hour while stuck at 100%. Worked for someone.
- I have restarted watch and phone many times....

Apple Watch Series 4, watchOS 6

Posted on May 12, 2020 5:15 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

wealthychef Author

Level 1

74 points

May 12, 2020 5:17 PM in response to wealthychef

This seemed to fix it:
- Charge the watch for long enough that you know it's truly at 100% despite it's incorrect battery measurement/readout.
- Power off watch for 15-30 mins (the amount of time is TBD, but I did 30 mins)
- Turn watch on.

Details:
- OK now it's 10:40 AM and I just removed the watch from the charger at 100% full charge. Normally this would hold easily through the next morning.
- 13:41 still at 100% charge, after walking 5000 steps, suspicious. One of the threads is exactly this, stuck at 100% and then running suddenly out after only a few hours and no warning. We shall see
- At 16:05 it still shows 100% charge, so I unpaired the watch again as there is no way I didn't even drop 1% charge in all this time. I am restoring from the 16:04 backup
- The watch is NOT charging, I'm doing this all on my wrist. Syncing now...
- 17:23 and still 100% LOLz death is upon us
- Another reset, no love
- OK I turned it off for 30:30 min. Restarting... so slow
- 18:05 Hey! 97%, changed to 96% while I was watching... uh oh, now to 95%
- Now we have the power draining super fast. How crazy
- 18:08 It's dropped from 97% to 78% in 3 minutes
- 18:10 69%
- 18:13 63% slowing down? Maybe it's stabilizing towards its true value now for some reason.
- 18:15 63% still. Huh.
- 18:41 62% is it fixed? this seems exactly normal
- I'm rebooting at 18:43 to sync my VoiceMemos. Sure does seem to take a lot longer to reboot my watch lately.
- 18:49 59% after futzing a little with Voice Memos... -- maybe I'm back to cancer
- 18:51 58%
- 20:02 55% holding firm again, huh
- 20:59 53%
- 22:50 48% off to bed now... is it fixed?
- 07:03 31% hurrah! I think it's fixed. I'm recharging now

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Answer 2

May 12, 2020 10:08 PM in response to wealthychef

Reported. Their site to report sucks. Has a character limit on text box so I couldn’t explain in full. Also outdated in terms of selecting watchOS version (doesn’t have latest). Fingers crossed they will find the big and fix the issue- but hopes are low based on reporting mechanism. They’d be better off reading these forums.

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Answer 3

Jun 14, 2020 12:51 PM in response to wealthychef

Actually ended up getting a brand new S5, and restored from backup. After a watchOS update- same problem happened again. I believe the issue is triggered on some watches (educated guess: possibly depending on apps or settings) by the update, b/c it doesn’t happen to everyone.

Charge up to 100%, turn off 30 mins, turn on- worked again. Has been stable for almost a month since.

did you update recently?

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