I updated my series 4 Apple Watch to WatchOS 7 today. I use my watch all day and usually have about 30% battery left when I go to bed and start changing. Today my phone got to 10% by 2:30 pm! Why is this drawing so quickly?
I had the same issue on my Apple Watch Series 4 after updating to iOS7. I tried shutting down background app refresh, and ensured sleep app and hand washing apps were off.
This didn't fix issue so I read on some other forums about repairing to your iPhone. So I did a reset on my watch. I restored using the same backup I just reset and today the problem seems to be gone. After a 2hour walk I have only went down 13% which is normal level. When I was running out of battery my watch was showing a 35% drop after my walk.
if restoring from the backup didn't work I was going to try setting up as new watch but obviously I didn't have to go that far.
I did the erase all content and then re-paired. Now my battery is at 60% after 12 hours. Much better. But super annoying to reset everything!
I tried the unpair and pair as a new watch and it works great. Problem solved for me : )
Update 7.0.1 fixed battery drain (AW4 and XR). I didn't unpair or do anything. But GPS track still don't work.
Apple posted this support doc <https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211865>
I have noticed excessive battery drain on both iPhone 8 after moving to iOS 14 and Watch 3 after installing 7. However when I turned on power save mode on the phone, effectively killing background tasks (and I normally only allow selected apps to have this privilege) the drain on both devices returned to more acceptable levels - even whilst doing a workout, the watch stopped losing power rapidly as did the phone.
As a workaround you may choose to try this and see if helps, if so this is pointing to errant background tasks / data transfer issues, which will either 'settle' or require an update. There is a separate issue with outdoor workouts not syncing / reading map data and as one of the larger databases on the phone is the health app, maybe this is cause of the issue.
I have the same type of experience with my series 4 Appel Watch and WatchOS 7. Turned of the background app activity but my normal watch face has a lot of complications and thus still drain the battery. If I use a watch face with no complication then the battery will not drain.
I un-paired my Watch 5 (cellular, running watchOS 7) from my iPhone, and re-paired it (using backup of my watch that was stored in the Watch app), and the battery of my watch is now back to normal. Give it a try.
Re-pair and clean setup helped me too. Initially after upgrade to WatchOS 7 on Watch 4 (WiFi) - it drained from 100% to 10% in 15 hours (normal use for me); after re-sync currenlty much better - 100% to 77% in 11 hours. So there is a hope to have back almost 2 days of use as prior upgrade.
Much to my surprise, un-pairing and re-pairing has improved things significantly. I've been testing for 1.5 days now on my Series 4, purchased on launch day.
After re-pairing, I kept hand washing off and I ended yesterday at about 35% with moderate use (no workout). I'm back to losing about 4-5% battery per hour, which is normal for me.
Tomorrow will be the big test, since I get a lot of emails and text messages pushed to my watch during a normal workday.
Strangely, after re-pairing, my battery health was at 91%. Before the re-pair, it was 96%. Go figure.
It looks like the un-pair and re-pair isn't working for everyone, but it is working for some. Give it a try. I was really surprised it worked.
I posted this morning about this same issue. Subsequently I decided to unpair my Apple Watch 4, turned on and off my iPhone and then pair my watch again and guess what.....issue resolved. Woohoo!!! Battery life still doesn’t seem to be quite the same as it was 3 days ago but definitely able to get more than a few hours before it’s dead. It hasn’t died since I paired it back to my iPhone.
Unpairing and install as new works for me. All new and „old“ features enabled again (hand washing, always on display, app refresh, etc..).
I‘m using an Apple watch 5 cellular! Now 18% battery drain after 4 hours „normal“ usage. This is what was before and will lead to approximately one day usage.
Immediately after the update one charge lasts for 8 hours maximum!!!
POSSIBLE SOLUTION:
I posted yesterday to say that I had unpaired and then set the watch up as a new watch and that it seemed better.
ive now had the watch on from the charger at 7am and at 3pm I’m still on 77% which is much more like normal.
it’s a pain in the *** to have to set up watch faces etc. again, but it does seem to have worked
Same for me (AW4) - I unpaired then setup as a new watch; have optimised apps, updates, notifications etc and today battery usage seems to be back to normal with a normal day of music, notifications, workout etc
Or maybe it just needed time to settle, reindex or whatever after the update - if so not impressed!
I’m relived but it sucks to have to do this for an upgrade that doesn’t hold
much benefit for older models of AW!
Unpairing and re-pairing seems to have solved my problem. I just did it and restored for my watch backup.
I first tried turning off some of the new features which provided little improvement. I only did this yesterday so i need to spend a day or two to confirm this is permanent but so far much better battery life.
Unpair the watch, pair the watch and restore from backup. This worked for me. Fully charged yesterday at 1000 and 23 hours later only at 50%. I did reduce screen brightness to lowest level. I don’t expect to continue to have this good of battery life, as I am not using the watch completely normal yet. Apple does need to correct this software problem as unpair/pair is a patch, not a fix. IMHO
watchOS 7 Battery Drain
