New and encouraging update from me! Sorry for the wall of text, but it looks like this saga may finally be over and I just want to luxuriate in it a little bit.
So the new OS updates did nothing to help, but another Apple product issue led to what may finally be a resolution (still want to wait and see rather than declare immediate victory).
I'd bought an AirTag a year and a half ago to put on our dog, especially in the crate while we travel and he goes in the plane hold. When I got it, I was able to add it to my account, but the Precise Finding and Play a Sound features never worked. I was a little miffed but never really thought about it too hard. I eventually called Apple Support this past summer, but I was a month or so past the 1 year mark and they did a bit of troubleshooting and eventually said that it must need repair but it would cost as much as a new one, so I gave up on it.
At Christmas, friends of ours got us a couple of new AirTags. When I went to set them up, they had the same problem. Could set it up, but not communicate after. This time my fiancé has a new iPhone with the UW chip, so I reset the AirTag (my phone couldn't even connect to remove it from my account so I had to factory reset the AirTag), and it worked fine on her phone.
Finally a new clue. Maybe it's my iPhone that's causing issues? Both AirTags and my Watch aren't working correctly. For that matter my AirPods sometimes have weird issues as well. I had noticed in my experimentation that although Low Power Mode seemed to not stop the battery drain issues, when I switched off Bluetooth, that helped. So I called Apple Support about the AirTag and Watch battery drain and how I suspected that maybe the phone was the problem. They insisted on treating them as separate issues, tackled the Watch first and did all the same steps and couldn't figure it out so they set up another Genius Bar appointment (the Watch drained about 10% in 20 minutes on the call). Onto the AirTag and same failure to find anything wrong. They ran a communications diagnostic on the iPhone and said that it's working as expected. They said one final step was to try a factory reset of the iPhone and to call back if that doesn't work, but I was already preparing to fight tooth and nail at the Apple store to get either a new Watch or new iPhone or SOMETHING so I wouldn't be plagued with these issues anymore.
But guys... it worked! On everything! After doing a factory reset and iCloud backup restore of my phone, the AirTag issue is solved, the Watch battery drain so far appears to be fixed, and other miscellaneous annoyances also seem to be working normally. For instance, I wanted to try the Plus subscription for PocketCasts so I could listen to podcasts on my Watch without having my phone, but my account status wouldn't sync across no matter what I did. Now it does.
Since Tuesday @ 2:30 pm:
- Went from 100% to 77% in 6 hours.
- Did an overnight sleep tracking, 100% to 82% in over 9 hours.
- Continued on down to 50% in 16.5 hours total.
- Another 100% to 62% in 14.5 hours including an overnight.
- Currently sitting at 77% after I fully charged it this morning over 8.5 hours ago.
So in other words, back to fantastic battery life! I've been feeling so confident that I have already re-installed all of my third party apps. Nothing saying that it can't degrade again, after all I had similarly promising results after doing factory resets on the Watch that then crumbled away over time, but I'm optimistic that maybe this solved a root cause.
For the record, I have an iPhone 12 Mini, and an Apple Watch Series 7. I hope this account helps anyone else suffering from battery drain. Could be caused by something affecting the communication between the Watch and the iPhone. Try to do a factory reset of your phone, for extra credit, maybe try factory reset of both (back up both, factory reset the Watch, then factory reset the iPhone, then boot up and restore the iPhone, then boot up and restore the Watch). Good luck to anyone who finds this thread in the future!
