watchOS 9 battery drain

Ok, so shutting off cellular on my run worked for me. I had also shut off bluetooth and used the native fitness tracker rather than workoutdoors. I lost about 18% on a nine mile run. The reason I think it’s cellular is because when I ended my run, my battery was at 58%, and then I turned on cellular and my watch IMMEDIATELY died. Didn’t even have an opportunity to turn Bluetooth back on.

I will try again tomorrow using Workoutdoors.

My watch is still doing it. I finished a 10 mile run and my watch immediately died as soon as I stopped the workout despite having battery left (not sure how much was left, it died before I could see). I put it on the charger and it immediately showed 50% on the charging status.

Notably, I forgot to shut off cellular which I have been doing as my workaround. So I guess I’ll keep turning off cellular on my runs. Kind of defeats the purpose of a watch with a cellular plan though…

Hi all,

I have almost the same experience. While I was on 8.x soft. AW7 lasts for 1 1/2 after which I have to charge them again. This was like magic. With new soft 9.x i see that battery life time goes down. 4-5% per hour :( tried to reset AW7 several times .. but still no luck :(

I find out that if I turn off localization services battery life will be back 1 1/2 day. but this will turn off localization on Iphone as well and no weather widge avaliable.

Another finding is that if I turn off Wi-Fi and just use the 5G lifetime keeps 1 1/2 .. or drain is not so dramaticall as while on wifi.

All services I have turned of on my AW7

As much I liked AW7 with such short battery lifetime I start to hate :(

J.

Hi,

try changing your watch face. I changed from Unity Lights to Chronograph Pro and my battery life returned to normal levels 🤗

It is a solution as the problem no longer exists on a different face. At least I now have my battery life back and I can wait to see if a fix comes out longer term.

Nope, just switched. Found a post that said particular faces caused the battery drain, especially Unity Lights that I had been using. Just switched to in my case a Chronograph Pro one.

My problem was solved by unpairing the watch and repairing it again to the phone 🙏🏼

Have you tried this:

I noticed that as long as I keep the bluetooth of my iPhone on, the battery situation will be normal. (now at ~1% per hour instead of 10%)

I switched from Unity Lights to Chronograph Pro and my problem was solved. Tried unpairing/re-pairing first but did nothing.

Update. After unpairing my Apple Watch SE and setting it up as a new watch the battery life seems back to normal. I will keep an eye on it and I will post an update in the next 2 weeks. This seems anyway to have solved the issue for me. I would give it a shot and see if this can help.

Same here Apple Watch S5 running WatchOs 9.1 battery health 83%

Sudden battery drain at 80% using Strava; on other occasions (4 times!) Using workout doors. I've already erased, unpair and paired again... Two things left to try: 1) erase, set as new; 2) new battery...

alternatively, a third and final solution: Get a Garmin Fenix as I should have from the beginning. No more BS Apple.

After my positive experience when setting the display to ‘Not’ Always on, I set it back to Always On for yesterday, and purposely left it on Numerals Duo for the full day. I actually didn’t end up taking it off for charge until about 4am, and there was 51% battery left. Unreal, I’d never had it last that well.

So today I’m purposely setting it back to my most usual setup, the Utility face. So far it’s at 95% after been taking off charge 1hr45mins ago. I’ll report back later how the drain goes, but it looks like pacf’s watch face theory has some merit. Maybe it’s something to do with the complications on my Utility face, as Numerals Duo doesn’t have any.

But my suspicion of Always On being the culprit seems to have been put to bed anyway

I was having the same issue with a Series 4. It went back to Apple's repair center twice but they found "no defect". Battery health was 84% but prior to WatchOS 9 was working just fine. I sold that watch and got a Series 8 and it has EXACTLY the same issue. Battery was 100% at 5:00 AM, down to 30% by 10:00 AM. Had a chat with Apple Support and they said everything looks fine but said they could do an Express Exchange (not that I expect anything to be different). I have turned off all unnecessary sync (music, photos etc.). Removed all non-Apple apps and nothing changed. Really bummed about this - hope they fix WatchOS 9 - that was the only thing that changed before this issue popped up

Have you tried changing the watch face as per some previous posts of mine? I switched from Utility Lights, which is what I was using when I got the problem, to Chronograph Pro. Everything is back to normal now.

After discussing with Apple Support, I've found that battery recalibration for AW4/AW5 started with the release of WatchOS 9: Apple Watch Battery and Performance - Apple Support. However, the rapid decrease of battery health started for me with WatchOS 9.2 update. Since I still get 1 day of usage after full charge, after unpair / pair Apple Watch, I think I don't need to change the battery for now.

Battery Capacity Reporting on Apple Watch Series 4 and Series 5

After updating to watchOS 9, your Apple Watch Series 4 or Series 5 will recalibrate and then estimate its maximum battery capacity more accurately.