Battery drain with watches 9.2

I've faced the battery drain for several weeks and hit on a solution that may help others (thanks also to Apple support for helping find this solution).

When the Watch OS updated to 9.3.1, my phone was on 9.1.1 and for some reason the phone OS update got downloaded but did not get installed. I realize now that the battery draining manifested just around that time.

After resetting the watch one thousand times and doing everything else suggested on this forum ... including removing all apps, disabling all active listenening/monitoring features and swiching off ALL notifications, I still had a dead watch within 3 hours of a full charge.

Updating the phone OS to 9.3.1 to be in sync with the watch fixed the battery drain automagically for me. I did unpair and pair it agin just to play safe. And now 7 hours after a full charge my watch battery is at 48% so I'm a very happy and contented person at this moment.

I've also recommended to Apple support to make the updates intelligent such that the watch OS is never ahead of the phone OS unless its absolutely essential - in case that helps prevent such glitches in the future. Or else to make sure these differences don't cause such unexpected outcomes.

Yep, rubbish isn't it!

The only thing I found that worked, is unpair your watch from the iphone, then when you restore DONT use a backup (so set it up as if it's a new watch).

You'll have to set everything back up again on the watch (faces, alarms ect), but if you use it for tracking (achievements ect), then that's stored in the Health app.

The re-boot phone and watch trick only works for a few days.

Apple definitely need to sort this out!

I would not pay that amount of money either only for them to poke around in the dark trying to figure out the problem. I had the same suggestion form the Genious bar a few of weeks ago. Here is what worked for me: whilst I shared in January my work-around, which referred to 9.2, the battery drain occurred again after upgrading to 9.3. Same as the previous time, I unpaired my Watch, then re-paired it, but using my backup, and then deleted all the excess watch faces. Like the first time around somehow my watch 6 faces were multiplied within the Watch App on my iPhone (but not on the Watch itself). After deleting the excess ones my battery life is back. I feel pretty confident now that my trick has worked two times.

Just reset your watch and make sure to turn off background app refresh and walkie talkie from the settings. I have the apple watch 4 and this is happening since a few months that whenever I update my watch , it drains the battery to zero in a couple of hours. As of now resetting it has worked for me.

Try re-booting the phone, then the watch when the apple icons showed on the phone.

mines been playing up since the update. I re-paired as new yesterday after reading that some one spoke to apple support who recommended that fix.

Fingers crossed it works (until the next update 🤣🤦‍♂️)

_kxdyn wrote:

justa side note, but even if this workaround keeps your watch running, it’s still a terrible user experience and Apple needs to fix it.

apps are designed with the assumption that they will be running in the background, and a ton of app features will simply stop working without it. :[

Turn them off individually.

Any apps that have complications will auto-refresh whatever the settings so if you have a lot of faces with a variety of complications you may not be able to turn many refreshes off.

Reset is reset and restart is completely different. So unpair and reset the watch. Then set it up as a new watch. Another thing I realised is that even if you dont do anything let it drain for a few cycles . It will fix itself after 5 days or so . I think the watch does a lot of things in the background when you install a new os version. So wait it out guys . It will fix itself .

I agree with @Stephan8888 and not spend the money. After all my restores, and talking with the Genius Bar, the final thing that seemed to work for me was a dual forced restart of both watch and iPhone. Holding both knobs on watch until Apple Logo appears and doing the Volume Up, Volume Down and the Power Button on iPhone until Apple logo appears. That seemed to be the final item that worked for me. It solved it but then 9.3 installed so I did the dual reboot right away and did not have any battery issues.

I normally have around 8 watch faces which I select according to activity or mood. I discovered that they were triplicated up to 24. After I deleted the excess ones my battery is back to normal

Check for damaged battery...

Charge the watch to 100% at bedtime.

Take it off charge,

Turn it OFF - hold in side button til you see the sliders and tap the tiny off button, top right. Confirm off with slider. 

In the morning turn it back on and it should be at least 95%. If NOT then the battery is damaged.

Thank you for clarifying - take nothing for granted when responding in here. Forced restart will reset many glitches as you will find out if you stick around.

Glady8927 wrote:

Just reset your watch and make sure to turn off background app refresh and walkie talkie from the settings. I have the apple watch 4 and this is happening since a few months that whenever I update my watch , it drains the battery to zero in a couple of hours. As of now resetting it has worked for me.

Reset in what way? Forced restart or unpair and pair again?

so I just unpaired my watch and left it unpaired for a while to see whether the issue is still there or not, I fully charged it at night and in the morning i put it back on the charger (the only way to know the battery indicator when it is unpaired) and Im shocked that only about 50% left, so the watch used 50% of battery overnight doing basically NOTHING as it is still unpaired. I can say in my case that it is not the watch settings or background tasks that causing the issue, Apple you need to FIX this asap!

Morning, did you re-boot your phone then watch after the unpairing?

I’ve found that’s the only thing that fix’s that issue.

mine still drains when I use Instagram on my phone for some strange reason (even though it’s not shown as an app in my watch app!!).

Apple need to look at this bug, and I definitely wouldn’t give them any money to look at your watch

If you have a ton of apps in the Watch may use a ton of battery. I like to keep mine lean.

It was just as likely the restart that was the fix. Making two changes at the same time gives no conclusion about either.

Restrictions on background refresh can be selective if one or two apps must have it

Batteries - Maximising Performance - Apple