WatchOS 9 Battery Drain on Cellular/GPS

I can confirm now, I disabled cellular on my watch and have given it over a week to test. Disabling cellular resolved the battery drain and high temperature issues on my watch. Hopefully Apple is quick to fix the issue with cellular, having cellular capabilities was a large part of why I decided to buy my Apple Watch.

I also have this issue, my Watch Series 7 is less than a month old, on WatchOS 8 I got an average of around 28hrs battery life while using the watch for things like working out for an hour a day, regular notifications, and directions on maps. Since updating to WatchOS 9 my battery now drains from 100% to 29% in just over 3 hours and the watch gets very hot on my wrist. I have tried things like disabling background app refresh, turning off the always-on display, unpairing and pairing again, and a forced reboot, nothing helps. This watch is less than a month old and I have always charged it with the official apple charger. Previous to updating to watchOS 9, I had background app refresh on, always-on display on, cellular and wifi on, etc and was still getting the 28hrs on watchOS 8. It seems there may be a bug in the watchOS 9.0 firmware that's causing issues with the battery.

My main concern at this point is that the extra heat being generated is doing permanent damage to my battery on my watch.

I have similar situation to yours – Apple Watch Series 7 was bought month prior to the release of WatchOS 9 and worked perfectly fine – I was able to track sleep, workouts, listen to music with Always On display feature enables and still have 40% by the end of the day. After updating, I have less than 10% by the end of the day. Probably there is a WatchOS 9 battery issue that cause to drain it a lot. In my case, even new Low Power mode is not helping a lot.

Haha.. now I'm smart, I will not upgrade before someone else say have no issue... 😅

Apple software engineer really like a trash, every years a new version release sure have battery issue.. how come they never notice battery life issue even every new version release. That why I call Apple software engineer is trash!

My carrier does not support cellular on the Apple Watch. Is it disabled by default?

I too have a problem with the battery life of my Apple Watch after upgrading to WatchOS 9. It used to last 24h, whereas now it drains within 18 hours (at best).

Thanks

Same issue here but with Series 6 no cellular. Prior to update, it lasts me the whole day even with heavy workout, with everything they way I want it running. It could even last until the morning on days I forget to remove it. But immediately after the update, it’s less than 50% by; but also touchscreen loses sensitivity after the first hour workout, everytime. I’ve tried resetting, unpairing and pairing. It’s the same. There’s a minor update but it hasn’t addressed the issue at all. I now have to charge within the day just to get through the day. Sucks!

Same issue here with Series 6 cellular+gps. I will try to turn off cellular too. During last night, with sleep mode activated the watch jumped from

battery 100% to 31% (8 hours). Before os9 it was average of 12% drain only

Hi, my series 5 also had the battery drain issue, but also the screen froze, especially overnight when wearing in bed.

One solution I found suggested was to unpair and repair the watch - didn't solve. I then found that the freeze issue was related to particular watch faces, especially the Unity Lights one - I used that. Changed to a Chronograph Pro screen - no more freezing AND no more battery drain 🤗

I hat the same issue without cellular (battery completely drained at 6pm on a normal day). I simply switched my watchface to a non-dynamic one (before i used the pride one where the warchface is wobbling with every activation). It fixed it!

I am now at 42% battery remaining at 10 pm.

Yep same problem with my sons Apple Watch SE. He is currently devastated as he loves his watch (which he saved for) and now it only lasts half a day at best. Everything was perfectly fine 2 days ago then he installed the update to 9.1

we have already tried repairing it but that didn’t help. Have just done a complete wipe and reset so fingers crossed. Apple really need to sort this out. This watch is only a few months old and if it’s now stuffed due to this update Apple will be replacing it with a brand new one.

I tried that and in the past it typically would fix or help alleviate the problem, but it hasn’t fixed this battery drain on watch os 9 or 9.1 for me it’s really frustrating to have to carry a charging cable for a watch that should last an eight hour work day.

Try to do a forced restart on your watch and that will help a bit

I would try unpairing the watch and setup as new. That has worked for me in the past on my series 6 cellular when restoring from backup did not help.

I have this issue too, on a 2020 SE.