watchOS 7 Battery Drain

I received my Apple Watch 6 today and so far it is losing about 4% an hour versus the 12% an hour I was seeing on my 5 after the Watch OS 7 update. So I think it is definitely an issue with the upgrade path. Unpairing and pairing is probably going to be the solution for those that upgraded.

Other things to turn off:

1. Disable pod cast syncing. I do a lot of podcasts, my watch was killing itself trying to syncing things I never listen to from my watch directly.
2. Turn off Music syncing, same thing

My problems aren’t gone but these things did help me a bit before.

same here with the 5. I did notice background app refresh was turned on (i always have it off), which is why i think when those who are restoring from backup has said the issue has been resolved. However I think its a deeper software issue, which should be fixed in an update... hoping the background app refresh is the answer today! haha

After the IOS7.0.1 update, my battery is back to normal. Although I did unpair, turned off for 5-10 mins, then on, the paired to back up immediately after the update was completed. In two hours I’ve lost only 3-5% of battery. Seems the update worked for me!

I’m following the “watchOS 7 problems” thread regarding mostly random reboots of AW3. Over there a omeone has mentioned unchecking and rechecking calendars in calendar app on iPhone. That’s what helped me cure my battery drain on my AW3, after re-pairing and setting as a new watch. Also, there is a setting at the watch itself, not the iPhone:

settings (watch)->wifi-> scroll all the way down and set hotspot to NEVER.

again, this is what I’ve red over at the forum, but hey, this update is so bad, anything goes.

hope I helped

I had the battery drain and other issues after updating my aw5 and iPhone 11 pro max. I performed the unpair and re-pair and my battery issue improved. I waited and only installed 7.0.2 on Sunday The drain issue has not returned.

I did shut down both devices after the install.

I had had the problem of my watch not unlocking my iMac that I resolved before installing 7.0.2. That has remained stabled and actually appears to unlock faster.

When I first updated to 7, my battery health was 100%. Since this nonsense, it is now at 96%.

It doesn’t appear that I have had the issue that some report about activity and health data not reflected accurately on the phone.

I think it is taking much longer to charge my battery, and even though the battery is lasting closer to normal, I don’t think it is quite as long as before. That could be because of the 4% drop in battery health.

After a year my Apple Watch 5 finally works and I can kick around, do workouts and stuff and it doesn't either run down stupidly quickly or shutdown and restart showing only reserve power whilst 70%-80% charged during a workout. I'm not saying this to **** people off, just to hold out a bit of hope (but not much) while agreeing that the bug(s) seem unresolved and unpredictable.

From new my watch seemed to sometimes do the sudden shutdown thing, and I hadn't checked to see what the charge level was, so lived with it. After it upgraded to OS7.00 it got dramatically worse and often wouldn't last more than 30 mins on a workout untethered from the phone.

I embarked on the Apple support trail. This took over two months, involved sending the watch in twice, and trying all the stuff like wiping the watch, setting up as a new watch and stuff. I probably spent about two days in all in chats and phone calls to advisers and senior advisers. I hit the end of the road when they refused to replace it because the face had a scratch. By this time on OS7.02 it was able to run for about 90 mins on a workout before restarting and showing reserve power.

Finally in what seemed like a result a further attempt resulted in a senior adviser taking sympathy and arranging a no-questions-asked replacement watch. Result!? No. The next time I did a workout with the brand new watch, paired as a new watch and running OS7.1, it . . . shut down after 90 mins and restarted on reserve power. At which point I gave up . . .

Along came the OS7.2 upgrade (and 14.3 for the phone) and I though since I had nothing to lose I'd risk updating. Since then, weirdly, (as others on OS7.2 still have problems) it works perfectly.

What this shows is that the problem isn't hardware. The new watch did the same as the old one, and also it's not allied to a particular OS, as the update seemed to work for me but hasn't for others.

I agree completely that this is absolutely unacceptable and the fact that Apple seem not to even admit to it is deeply unethical. I see that OS7.3 has just arrived. I'm not changing anything!!

I did a hard reset, then unpaired. Then set up as new watch. Battery life seems to be better after half day but I’ll be keeping an eye on it.

Try un-pairing and re-pairing the Apple Watch.

Unpairing and then pairing the watch to my phone again also worked for me.

Unpairing an repairing fixed mine also.

Ohh how I miss “old time” Apple.

I also unpaired / paired (restoring rather than setting up as new) and it has solved the issue. If anything, battery life is now better than before!

I simply upgraded to 7.0.1 and that fixed my battery drain issue.

Did you upgrade to WatchOS 7.0.1? That fixed it for me.

I had the same issue and I think in this update Apple introduce the battery health feature for the first time on Apple Watch. On your watch when you go to settings > battery > battery health - you can see your maximum capacity and there is an option for optimize battery charging. I have found it helps with the charging time when you turn it off, since it charges normaly to 80% and then slowly to 100%.