Battery drain in WatchOS 8 on Apple Watch 6

I have been talking to Apple support since August. Apple Watch 6, new in April. Battery worked fine for 4 months, then started draining within 10 hours. At their request, watch was sent in for repair. I got a notice when they received it and 2 hours later I got an email that there was no problem. I have spoken to 2 support reps who say they will "see me to then end" of this problem. I've done numerous data analytic uploads, unpaired, re-paired..anything they tell me, I do. Supposedly, 10 days ago problem was given to a higher tech support team- I haven't heard anything since then. This is ridiculous. All the programmers and tech people at Apple and this problem can't be fixed!!?? I was a programmer/customer support person for 25 years and NEVER did it take me 3+ months to resolve a problem. So....after all of my time, their time (and all the others who are having this problem), just send us replacement (or upgraded) watches. It's got to be less costly than all this 'tech support' time spent. If it's really being looked at by tech support. I'm beginning to have my doubts.

The idea that battery charge percentage is possibly incorrect is interesting. But, at one point, my watch did go to total blackout in the middle of the day and I had to put it back on its charger. After it got back to 100% the problem did repeat the next day. So, this did not recalibrate the battery status. And also this possibility of a battery charge inaccuracy does not change the problem that the watch is going dead in the middle of our daily lives.

Well maybe you did not have luck. It seems like the problem is random. I threw my old series 3 and got also a 7 (only gps). After one day with full functionality I am at 42. If you have the celular maybe it could be a different story

Apple deleted my reply, so I’ll post it again.

Series 5 ceramic, 8.1, significant battery drain.

Restore and set up as new watch didn’t fix it. No media installed. No 3rd party apps installed. Fitness, breathe, etc all disabled.

I have been having a weird battery drain and i also have noticed that my rings numbers and rings sometimes don't load up right away. Def something going on with the activity app and maybe that is causing the battery drain.

Ok I’m not sure what happened, since I haven’t updated any iOS or watchOS but the battery has been back to what it was (graph as per attached). Apps that got auto-updated yesterday was Truecaller, Slack, Soundhound, Messenger & Carousell. Hope this info helps.

I didn’t do any resetting, nor unpairing/pairing it to my iPhone

OS8 is disappointing. This feels like the slowing of old phones to “help” with performance. My watch has to charge 2-3 times per day now and it very clearly started after the latest and greatest OS. iOS is also terrible. Just bummed about the whole thing.

Ok I see a lot of people talking about apps killing their watches. Now, I have Facebook Messenger on my Series 3 GPS and would that kill my watch even if I don't have any messages coming through? I have FB Messenger on my Series 3 LTE watch and that watch does fine with battery life as it takes 4 days for the watch to actually die (not wearing up but was charged) and 2 days for it to die (if I wear it on the weekends). My GPS watch used to get 2 days off one charge and after the update that was sent out in August 2021 my watch has to be charged every night. Also, I took an old bumper case I had on the GPS watch and replaced it with a new case along with cleaning around the glass and charging area to make sure it was clean and it seemed like the draining slowed down a little bit as it was only draining 10% every two hours but still it's a massive draining compared to the LTE watch I have. I'll see what happens and report back tomorrow.

Rapid battery drain hit me too just a couple of days ago. Goes from 100% to less than 20% in a few hours. Watch now takes forever to recharge (like half a day).

I did an erase and re-setup as new and it hasn’t helped. Both watch and phone are now on the latest OS and that also hasn’t made a difference.

At this point I consider the Watch essentially bricked and useless. I’ve worn it constantly since I first got it 3 years ago but now I think it must go into the junk drawer.

Series 4 Watch non-cellular.

The thing is my watch is only 3 months old. I didnt change any habits or do any updates before it started acting funny. Did yesterday’s update hoping that fixes something. All i know is i am not going to turn my watch into a brick juat to save power.

Exactly. Currently i only have two 3rd party apps loaded which are AccuWeather and Facebook messenger. And they were on there before the issue started. When i did the new update i even took off a few apple loaded apps that i just dont use and could remove. Seeing as how i have the 3 which doesnt come with much space i try to run my watch as lean as possible. I just use the apple fitness app for my runs i stead of the nike one i had used on my phone in years past. The apple one works great no complaints. But if it is the culprit i will need apple to fix it. I will keep wearing my watch and hope for apple to fix it. It seems hit or miss so buying a nee watch when this is a nee watch seems pointless. Here is hoping apple finds the bug and fixes it.

But this started already on my watch 4, under OS 7-something, which had no continuous monitoring of blood oxygen (and the model doesn't have this feature). Also the battery was in pretty good shape for a 3-year old watch (I'm trying to remember, but at the Apple Store it was ruled out from the beginning). I made no changes to what was monitored before it started. To make sure, I even deleted all gym apps to really rule out their interference and I didn't even install them back.

Also, it doesn't explain why the problem migrated to the NEW watch 7 (factory reseted, not restored from back up), with shiny new battery. Even worse, why only 2 days ago if I've had the watch for over a month now?

I basically have what I've had since ages: regular heartbeat, detect when I'm doing a workout if I forget to start one, GPS. All these things worked perfectly fine on the old watch series 4 until mid-2021. Batteries don't go kaputt overnight.

Anyway, I've set up the newly restored watch (again) to reduce a lot of battery consumption, even if it means reducing things I never had to and it's already down to 92% after a full charge 4:30h ago. That's not how it worked until a few days ago.

Regardless of any changes you did or didn’t make to your series 4, the OS was automatically working differently and more intensively as health related features were building out.

For your new watch, 92% after 4 1/2 hours is excellent battery life. Excellent is 18 hours each day, or about 5% drainage per hour.

I have tried all of the suggestions and nothing has worked so far. The Watch battery drains very quickly and it is right after the last OS update. It is very frustrating because there is no other explanation other than the OS update but I am more ****** that this mysterious situation "encourages" people to buy new gear. I decide when I need a new device and should never be the people selling the thing.

I removed my comment after realizing you turned the service off only for certain apps. But, For me, that would not work since I want my workout to track my workout locations and my watch face needs my location for weather.