Battery drain in WatchOS 8 on Apple Watch 6

It’s any workout app for me I run a lot and have always managed to use all apps, always on and fitness apps with way more than 24 hours of charge on my series 6. I did a 2 hour run with 100% and ended with 10% apple need to sort this !

One of 20 unpair /pair helped , but after shut down the watch and turning on the issue appeared again . Also it is noticeable that watch is lagging especially if I go to general > about , capacity calculation is too long .

My husband and I have series 4 watches.

My husband who never updates anything by choice has 57% left at bedtime and he's on Version 7.5

I have to charge mine by 1pm after charging it overnight as it's totally dead. I'm on Version 8.1

Infuriating!

Yes, mine started draining the very next day after installing OS 8. There is no doubt it is due to that update. I wonder if the added functionality is just too much for older watch hardware. There is no fix.

I have this issue as well on my series 5. I used to love this thing, but now, on 8.1, I don't care for it. The battery used to last me two days (it's about 18 months old almost). When I arrived home on the second day on one charge I was firmly at nearly 40% left of battery life. Now when I arrive home on the second day I have 20-25% or below left. That is a significant drop in my opinion. Also, the battery health just after nearly 18 months is showing 94%. The last time I checked it was at 96-97% just about a month or so ago. Just after 18 months. That's a big drop for a nearly new watch that I made sure I charged correctly when it got to about 20-35% battery life each time. I'm guessing these watches are designed to last about 2-2 1/2 years, if when battery health gets to 80% that you have to change the battery or buy a new watch altogether, which, at these prices, I don't see me doing. I wish Apple would design these watches with longer lasting, better battery health, but I am sure for something so tiny there is only so much they can do when it comes to batteries and battery life. I don't know. Oh, I DID restore my watch to factory and that didn't fix my battery drop issue. I am guessing it has to do with the battery health and it will soon hit 89% VERY soon. Wonder how much a new battery for these things cost?

Thanks, Mladen.

OK, just a small question just to steam off : Why to use smartwatch without activity, heart, GPS, oxygen and other monitoring? My watch pretty quickly reduces to a flashy thing that can show time in about half day...

Anyway, I had multiple restarts, unpairs with "new watch" and without, had to do a hassle to factory reset my phone, disabled allmost all functions, WiFi. Nothing really helps. Waited two weeks in hope watch resolves its issue. Nope.

As I see it : watchOS is a complex operative system with own drivers and services that must have high interconnectivity to iPhone's OS. Since we do not have a possibility to see communication hog, I would disable BlueTooth and WiFi for this holiday to see if there is a communication issue.

But, of course, I would like to see some activity from Apple. Another known headphone company went to bunch of customers to loan theirs headphones to debug them. Would Apple do this for us?

On the topic - to disable oxygen sensor did not made battery last longer.

Disabling BlueTooth did made battery life litle longer. So, this is not a communication issue.

Off the topic: Well, I understand that watch is't a physician. That not what I using my watch for, anyway. I can disable and prioritise features but it seems right now that allmost all features are disabled and that is not much to prioritise anymore.

When you look at Apples presentations - every feature does matter, but I know how advertising works. I do not have many expectations. I know, "Just return you watch and wait to support to give you a new one". Is this the answer to everything ?

Like others have suggested, I wonder if the activity app is the culprit. After all, it must be the only app that is running and tracking volumes of data continuously through the day, whether or not a workout is used.

So i just turned off the watch face location services since i do not use a face that shows anything specific to location but i left workout set to while using since one of the reasons i use this watch is for my runs. Hopefully this will help.

thanks

I have a Series LTE Series 3 watch and only use it for messages, FB messages and calculate my steps and I get about four days off one battery charge. When I got my Series 3 GPS only watch last November I could get two days (using only the same features) off one battery charge. Now, the GPS only watch needs to be charge every day and the drain is 10% per hour unless I don't tap on the screen to check the time, it might drain 7% per hour. My LTE watch still gives be four days off one battery charge and both watches batteries are still above 99% in battery life.

Like certain stuff I had off will be turned back on after an update and new features will be added and turned on also that wasn’t there before the update it’s like dang let me know what you’re doing. I did notice this location feature months ago and it was annoying to see that purple arrow on my watch but thought it was just updating my location for the weather, even disabling the weather app background feature it still would appear. If this location thing is the reason why everyone is experiencing the battery draining issues, Apple will have some explaining to do.

I also noticed that.

If they want us to discover new ways of draining the battery, they should make an app on the phone to show that to us… wait, that already exists so why don’t they use it?

anyway, mor features I’m turning off (some of which I’m sure I always had turned on with my previous watches). Let’s ser how it behaves today.

From the top of my head: brightness is on the lowest possible (I always used it 2/3 on since some 3 watches ago). I turned off the display always on which was never an issue until last week. I have more features turned off now than I had on previous watches.

it seems no one is paying attention to the training app tracking crazy as if I were working out for hours a day when I’m not.

It sure would be nice if apple would explain what might happen or respond with comments. BUT, here is what I've found in the last few months with my series 4 and all the updates.

I wear my watch all day, tracking things from whenever I put it on in the night (+/- 1 am), through 5 to 7 miles of walking, 20 minutes of exercise, and 10 to 20 minutes of swimming. Historically, it was at about 40% when I put it on the charger between 10:30 and 11 pm. The only times I got it near aero in the past was when my Move was over 1200 and steps over 23,000.

With the big update a few months ago, the first few days the battery was down to zero by afternoon. That is when I started reading these questions and suggestions, but before I got around to unpairing or anything big, it started to last longer, betting back to 35-39% when I went to bed.

The 8.3 update took me back to under 20% by 9 pm the first day, then 23%, the next, 26% the next, etc., then up into the 30's. For the last two nights its been over 40%.

So I'm thinking that each update does some calibrating or something internal that it would be nice to understand. Maybe the solution is patience?

Updated to IOS 8 on a series 4 and battery life plummeted to 5 hours. Tried everything reset the watch, erase and re-pair the watch, I even wiped the watch and the watch app from my phone [12 series] and them paired as a new user. No help.

Figured after 3 years my battery was done so I ordered a new Series 7 watch. Cleared the iWatch software from my phone and set up the new watch as a new user.

Same $&@#% result! Battery life of less than 6 hours even when I shut every possible connected app or power using process down.

Running IOS 8.4 on a Series 7.

What to do…..Simply wait for Apple to get enough complaints?

Very frustrating.