Apple Ultra Watch 9.3 update battery drain (bleeding out)

It seems like a restore/ erase and re -pair worked for me. Watch is at 47% since 10 hours. Hopefully tomorrow is good as well. I did notice my Sleep++ tracking changed in appearance. I used to see AWAKE, REM, CORE, DEEP. Now it only shows AWAKE, RESTLESS,RESTFUL.... wonder why this changed?

Hello. So I had the same issue as everyone and I am using an Apple Watch Series 4, nike version (if that is even a thing, hehe). Went for a swim yesterday, wore my watch at 1030am after showering. Battery was dead at 1500hrs after my swim (which was an hour long). So I tried charging it but it never charges more than 80%. So went to settings checked the battery integrity, it was 87% so still pretty good, doesn't require a change of battery yet.

• Did the hard reset - Did not work
• Unpaired and erased the settings and re-paired it as a brand new did not work as well
• So I furthered my research turns out my face watch was the issue, I changed it to the Nike compact face. Battery started charging back to 100% and back to the 18 hrs usage.

Hope this helps.

LD150 wrote:

Did you update the phone to iOS 16.3.1 first? Have you restarted both of them?

And if nothing works, unpair the watch from iPhone and pair it again, which can resolve odd issues, which are not common to everyone.

Same for me with the battery drain after the update. Had a series 7 with this issue. Upgraded to an ultra, still has the same issue. One thing not reported in this thread that I’m experiencing is that the phone connection icon (top of the screen when you swipe up) flickers a lot between green and red now. Never had this before. I’m assuming this is partially the cause of the battery drain.

Have tried resets but now unpaired and setup as new watch will see if it helps.

Although it doesn’t affect everyone there is definitely a correlation between the update and this issue. Just that whatever is triggering it may not be universal I suspect.

Draining Li-ion batteries achieves nothing positive and can cause harm.

Go for setting up the iphone as new but first export or otherwise make safe any unsync'd documents and photos.

Ensure Messages and other assets like contacts are sync'd to an account like iCloud

Back up third party apps like Whatsapp to icloud.

Accept that you will lose some social media history

Unpair and erase the Watch

-Backup the iphone

-Restore iphone to factory settings

-Set up the iphone as new without restoring the backup. Install only your essential email accounts, no extra software, no social media

-Pair the Watch to the iphone

-Run them both like that for 24 hours and see how long the battery lasts.

Yes, I meant OS-related. However I don’t fully agree with your statements as there’s obviously an issue with the OS update or process in some way since fully reinstalling the OS has rectified it and the issue started with apples OTA update for some users. also this bug was across multiple watches and phones for us so, while I get your point, no it wasn’t just her phone.

I understand that if the bug was third party software this wouldn’t have worked. my point was more that up until now we had eliminated everything except OS installation and third party apps. Based on this, it does not seem to be a third party app issue and I feel it’s good for people to know that iCloud restore was still possible since set up as new phone is quite annoying and I haven’t seen anyone else try all of the above.

How is the update? I did a full reset of the watch and started from scratch. It has been on since noon and is just now at 90%. Whatever got corrupted was fixed with the reset!!! Now I'm worried about updating to 9.5 haha..

Think Ill just wait a bit for this one. Just happy to have life back into the ultra!

Did you update the phone to iOS 16.3.1 first? Have you restarted both of them?

hold in side button and crown at the same time until the white Apple appears

Well - for me and the Series 7 looks like part of the issue was a user error :) / LD150 Thanks for the simple reminder to update my phone first

I thought my IPhone had been updated to 16.3.1 - but it was not - I did the following below and currently the battery is not rapidly losing its charge - I will see over night but - as for now it’s not.

so having downloaded the Apple Watch 16.3.1 before the iPhone 16.3.1 my battery was going from 100% to 20% overnight

to solve the issue - - I next Completely disconnected my watch from my iphone - I then reset both my Iphone and my Apple Watch -

then I updated the IPhone to 16.3.1 - then paired the Watch back as a new new and

IT NOW appears That this has at least slowed the drain problem by 50-60% - still a faster battery drain than before BUT / at least this is workable - until I can figure what else is going on

If you want one clear solution...

1. unpair
2. restore the iphone to factory settings
3. set up iphone as new phone, no backup restore
4. pair the Watch

But it is an extreme measure as you need to take care not to lose too much data if you need to keep the phone that way

Apple Watch battery drain - the ultimate … - Apple Community

KMStudio wrote:

So. Due to a crappy update. Now I am tasked with completely starting over. Spending hours to fix something I didnt cause. And in the end we will still not know what caused this. i did not change anything in my phone or on the watch. This is absolutely caused by an update. either the iPhone or watch or both. @apple. can you fix the issue with your flagship watch and not push the **** on the customer!

You aren't speaking with anyone from Apple here. This is a user to user only forum. You obviously have an issue, but not one which is universal. There is no battery drain on my Apple Watch Ultra. None. It's never fun when you get an issue, but to expect Apple to solve something, which does not effect the majority of users makes it almost impossible to accomplish.

There are a number of Ultra users in my office. All are updated to WatchOS 9.4 and no one is having battery drain issues. So, clearly the update isn't "crappy" as you suggest. But something may have gone wrong in your case, so you'll need to work your way out of this.

While it may not be fun, it would be advisable to wipe your watch to factory settings, then set it up as a new watch, not from backup.

I have the same problem . Apple ultra battery was draining quickly on the 1st day after backing up from the previous apple series 6 , i got it reset and download as a new Apple Watch , after a few hours , battery life seems to be holding on well .

I unpaired my watch and re -paired. It seems ok now.

Walkie Talkie left on? Astronomical watch face (which uses live data)?