Rapid Battery drain on Ultra watch after 9.2 update & iOS 16

Hello Gazillion,

If you swipe up on the face of the Apple Watch, the Control Center should appear. Tap on the battery percentage. Are there any notices about the battery displayed here? If so, we recommend following them.

You also want to be sure that all the apps on both devices are also updated by following these steps: How to manually update apps on your Apple device - Apple Support

"How to manually update apps on your Apple Watch

1. Open the App Store and scroll down to the bottom.
2. Tap Account.
3. Tap Updates.
4. Tap Update next to an app to update only that app, or tap Update All."

If an update was recently installed, keep in mind it is not unusual for battery life to be reduced for a short period of time after an update as housekeeping tasks such as app updates and indexing occur in the background. If the issue continues it was less than 72 hours ago, we would suggest you to monitor the Apple Watch to see if the issue continues after that.

These steps and tips should help get the most out of the battery in your Apple Watch: Apple Watch Battery and Performance - Apple Support

If the unexpectedly poor battery life and long charging time issues continue, then reach out to Apple Support directly, as they'll be best equipped to investigate the behavior: Contact Apple Support

Kind regards.

UPDATE: I was unable to unpair and successfully repair so Apple told me to mail in for service. They sent it back saying they could not duplicate the issue. Miraculously, upon receiving the watch back it is able to pair to my phone (it is in fact my exact watch I mailed).

Since I did not pair and restore from backup of 9.3 that ruined the battery life to begin with, I paired it to phone and setup as a new phone which defaulted to Watch OS 9.2. Battery life is better than it was before 9.3 update, thank you Apple for making me setup my watch again from scratch. I will not be updating my watch again (turned off auto update). At least until 9.4 and I guess I'll just have to see how it affects my ability to use it in the long term.

FIXED! On a whim, I turned on low power mode and turned off cellular, and let it charge overnight.

The rapid battery drain has stopped. I am 4 hours in and only a 2% drop (100%-98%).

Note I also tried unpair and re-pairing it with no effect.

I hope apple investigates and adds this to the repair notes, and fixes whatever is causing it in a future update.

Tried what earlfromwashington suggested, also a factory reset but didn't restore from back up and worked a treat! battery is down to 50% and it hasn't been charged for 30 hours! This rate will be 60 hours without low power mode!

Turning off cellular, putting in battery save mode and fully charging, then after fully charged turn on cellular and turn off battery save mode.

Yes - turned both back on in the morning after it had a full charge (not sure if that also made a difference) but it is back to working as normal!

Same issue - update a few days ago and battery life in the ultra drops to just a few hours. Also shows reduced charge due to overheating. Apple did the battery diagnostics and wasn't able to find anything. In the end, they are sending a replacement under applecare....

but if the issue is the WatchOS update, the replacement won't really make a difference. If so, this will be an expensive bug for them to fix with all the applecare returns.

Support just ran a diagnostic on my iWatch via my approval through the Privacy & Security then Analytics & Improvements, which I had never had done before by anyone when calling in about any Apple device.

Unfortunately, they had me unpair the watch and we could never get it to repair to the phone. It simply kept failing to pair. Mailing it in for service...unbelievable!

Support was very nice though!

I am having the exact same issue. Updated to 9.3 and I start my day at 8am with a full charge and by 230pm my watch is dead. Previously I could get 2-3 days of use before charge. No new apps, no settings changes, only updated to 9.3. It has been 4 days since update. I have paired/unpair and also turned off cellular. I have ultra with Verizon service.

Happening on my Ultra since updating to 9.3 within the last 36 hours. Battery life cut by 60%.