Apple Watch high data usage

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Level 1

19 points

Apple Watch high data usage

Beginning June 20th, I have noticed that my Apple Watch battery isn’t lasting quite as long as it usually does. I then noticed that during my daily run, my battery is definitely draining much faster than usual (I run without my phone). On one run of just over an hour, with full charge at the beginning of the run, I was down to 8%. After some digging, I noticed that my watch was using an unusually large amount of cellular data during the time of my runs between 75MB to 150MB. I have to assume there is some data usage going on even when I’m not using the watch on cellular, I just cannot “see” that data usage, which may explain the drop in battery life. I see that the data usage is under System Services > General. I cannot think of anything that has changed on the watch around June 20th that would cause this problem. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can do to get this under control? Thanks.

Pic below shows General cellular usage of 2 days after resetting the statistics.

Apple Watch

Posted on Jul 6, 2020 2:00 PM

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Answer 1

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javaliga

Level 10

119,445 points

Jul 6, 2020 7:35 PM in response to JimKeith

The first (and simplest) thing to try if something isn’t working right is to restart your Apple Watch and its paired iPhone. If necessary (device not responding), try a forced restart. Both methods can be found here:

How to restart your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Restart your iPhone - Apple Support

If that doesn't help, the next steps would be to unpair and pair your watch again and restore from the backup. This deletes all temp and corrupted files and re-indexes the file system.

Unpair and erase your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Set up your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Understand Apple Watch performance and its relation to your battery.

Apple Watch Battery and Performance - Apple Support

“Battery life” is the amount of time your device runs before it needs to be recharged. “Battery lifespan” is the amount of time your battery lasts until it needs to be replaced. Maximize both and you’ll get the most out of your Apple devices, no matter which ones you own. See the "Tips for Apple Watch" section in:

Batteries - Maximizing Performance - Apple

If the battery drains too fast after an update, see the replies to:

Update 6.2.1 Battery Draining Too Quickly… - Apple Community

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Answer 2

JimKeith Author

Level 1

19 points

Jul 7, 2020 11:48 AM in response to javaliga

Thanks I had already tried the restarts and such so I did the unpair/pair this morning. I only had a short run today but it seemed the data usage was low for the run (for some reason podcasts downloaded 2MB, and Apple ID service we’re about 2MB but other systems services were low. Will see how it holds up on the longer run tomorrow. 🤞

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