watchOS 7 Battery Drain

I too have unexpected battery drain on Series 4 after the OS7 upgrade. Battery drops to 0 around 7pm, when previously it was good to 11 pm with about 50 % . Will Apple fix this ? I turn off all the features that ios7 had turned on, or added. Turned off the hand washing timer too. Still, battery drops quickly.

I don’t think there is any need to turn anything off. Unpair and pair has worked for many. Simply switching off the phone then the watch. Wait 5 minutes. Switch the phone on, let it fire up and then switch the watch in. When I first did the unpairing process nothing improved but that second stage cured it. The first day it lasted all day again including being used for exercise. Battery life is now after a couple of days normal.

Of course Apple should tell us this will happen and even advise us to switch off and on again as above. That modicum of communication would help. Better would be a fix that enables the update but does not intrude.

I usually, out of habit, switch a device off and then on again after an update. This time I forgot and suffered!

This - I did an unpaid/repair twice with backup and not only did my battery start draining at 1% a minute (it was even draining when turned off) but it corrupted the charge function. When I unpaired a third time and restored as new the charge function returned and my battery is more or less normal. Still not fantastic (it’s a 4) but it never really was. I always had to charge st least once during the day. But after the OS 7 update charging had to be done up to six times daily. Oh and even though I restored as new all my previous fitness data was retained.

Seems I’m having a similar problem with my series 5. Since the OS7 update my battery life has diminished by at least 70%. After a full charge my battery is completely used up in about 4 hours. It usually last a full day with battery left over. I did turn off many but not all of my background refresh with little to no change.

After upgraded to watchOS7, I have exactly the same problem on my cellular series 5. Fully charged in the morning, just before my 1 hour workout 6pm, the battery drain to 30% level. I actually finished my workout but soon after that my watch went dead!!! Looked into this forum, I have found solution!!!! On my iphone at watch app, I went to general>usage. I see each particular app using much of the energy and I have found the podcast use a lot of power to download episode. Then I came out and turned off from automatic download. Then I switch off some unnecessary notifications e.g. mail etc. Only keep the ones which I definitely needed to receive notification. After I did all of these last night. I left my watch charged overnight. I waring it in the morning at about 7 am and continue my routine as normal. Before my workout this evening my watch have 79 percent charged and after my 1 hour workout it is now 49 percent. To night I will have it fully charged and waring it during my sleep tonight. I will see how it perform in the morning. Anyway I'm more comfortable now otherwise I have to buy another one!!!

The unpair/pair from backup seems to have solved my problem. Took my AW 5 from charger 8:30am and did 1 hour of workout (with cardiac monitoring on). Now it's 5pm where I live and I have 76% of battery left. Seems OK now.

But... my setup: I don't receive notifications, handwash is off, sleep mode is off etc. When I don't workout, I normally go to bed with 70% of battery left.

So I followed the advice of others on this thread and unpaired and repaired the watch (kept cellular plan). It definitely works! I took the watch off charge at 3:50am and at 5am after a drive to work and a 40 min walk, dropped to 98. That’s better than before os7! Now Apple have released 7.1... I’m reluctant to install. It’s a shame that we, as consumers have to do this. I didn’t pay roughly $1000 for a product that I have to troubleshoot myself...

This morning I updated my iPhone 11 to iOS 14.01. Now the Watch app is really pushing hard to update my AW4 to WatchOS7.01. After unpair/pair twice to get my battery back to snuff and figuring out that I needed to turn Bluetooth off and on again in WatchOS7.0 to restore being able to unlock my Macs, I'm pretty reluctant to update to 7.01. I'll probably do it tonight before charging so I get the whole day tomorrow to see the hopefully good or benign results on battery life and Mac unlocking.

I have not done the unpair/re-pair step to see if it helps yet with my Watch battery drain (series 4 dead in approx. 4 hours from overnight full charge), but I DID update to 14.0.1 on my iPhone XS and am now trying to see if there is a WatchOS update (which I see there is from this forum), however since updating my iPhone, I just get "Unable to check for updates" now in the Watch app.

Apple is really dropping the ball these days and I'm seriously tempted to part ways.

Watch series 4, same issue after update. Unpair, pair and restore solved the issue. I did miss some watch faces after the restore, but recreating them was not much of an issue. Sad that Apple does not recommend this step. Would save us a lot of stress and anger.

My battery loss yesterday was horrendous. There was no published help from Apple so I discovered discussion boards and used the belt and braces (US = suspenders) method recommended on the threads. I paired and unpaired and then followed the routine of switching the phone and the watch on and off following a sequence.

it worked a charm. The six-month-old Series 5 is back to normal. I put it on at 100% at 10:45, took an hour’s exercise and wore it normally for the rest of the day. At midnight it shows 30% but I fiddle with it a lot and always have the brightness control on max.

Why couldn’t Apple put out a reassuring and helpful bulletin at the start of this omnishambles ? No company is ever too big to fail if it takes its customers for granted.

After the original issue and the unpair/pair - power down/up phone & watch were executed the situation improved greatly. It wasn't quite same as 6, but it was tolerable.

I did the update to both phone and watch last night and fully charged both. It appears that with normal nightly wear (for Autosleep) it's draining at about 1% per hour even though I forgot to put watch in theatre mode overnight.

Overall seems back to normal. Amen

I also unpaired/repaired as a new watch (not with backup) and it helped slow the battery drain quite a bit. I also turned off the watch’s WiFi connection, which was reset to on; in the past this has caused the battery to drain faster. This has further slowed the battery drain, but will have to see if I can get through 24 hours without charging. To turn off WiFi on the watch itself, go to the Settings app on the watch (not on the phone), select WiFi and toggle it to off.

I have an Apple Watch 5 (non-cellular) and could go 1.5 days or more without a battery charge depending on use.

I updated my AW4 (Battery Health 94) from 7.0 to 7.01 last night. This morning it's running way ahead of 6.2.8 and 7.0. I put it on at 12 midnight, slept with it on to get sleep measurements and at 10am Battery Life stood at 83%.

With 6.2.8 Battery Life at 10a averaged only 76%. On Sept 19th with the 7.0 update it dropped 55% at 10a and was dead by 2p. The unpair/pair from backup and following Gerhard Leeb's steps plus toggling Bluetooth of and on to get it to unlock my Macs again, from Sept. 20-24 on 7.0 it averaged 78% at 10a. So 83% today at 10a with 7.01 is terrific.

This fixed it for me too, now ending the day on 40+% where before I was charging at least twice since watch os7 upgrade . It’s a pain but unpair and then pair again and should fix for you too hopefully. No idea why this fixes it tho 🤷‍♂️