Is anyone else experiencing battery drain from the recent update? I have a new watch and this recent update, in under an hour (53 minutes to be exact), had my battery go from 55% to 39%.
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Apple Watch SE
EBeth0001 wrote:
I did charge it to 100%. It’s been 16 minutes and it’s at 82%. I’ll let it drain to 50% and then power it down until I decide what to do with it.
My advice is to keep using the watch if possible. Put it back on the charger if necessary, but keep its alive and let it sort out its post-update tasks instead of shutting down and having to start over, and over, and over...
You won't do any real harm to the battery by leaving it on the charger for a day or so. The charging system on Apple Watch is intelligent, and it will just stop the charge to prevent over charging, and continue to use the charger power to run the watch.
I and many other users have noticed that battery usage is often much heavier than normal for a few days after a software update. We believe this is because the internal storage gets reindexed after the update is installed, and there is probably a lot of processor work to do this and clear all the remains of the previous version. Usually this clears after a few days and everything is back to normal. However, you need to let the software do its job and not keep making it go back to the start line by shutting down.
Yes, I’ve unpaired my watch. I rebooted both devices. I wiped and reloaded my phone from backup. I’ve turned off all notifications, deleted all apps on the watch, turned on low battery mode, turned off Siri, etc. I have very few apps on my phone. I have noticed that when my watch gets into the state where the battery drains very quickly, the workout app is slow to load and doesn’t capture heart rate. I just rebooted both the phone and watch and still cannot get my watch to capture my heart rate.
This seems like a race condition that starts impacting functionality (like heart rate) and increases processing to the extent that the battery is negatively impacted (draining extremely fast).
Similar here with Apple Watch 7. Pre-9.5.2, it would last for a good day and a half. Now I have to charge it twice a day. Wishing now I hadn't let it update.
See -> Apple Watch battery -> Apple Watch - Battery - Apple
I am also having a major battery problem after the update. I need help from Apple. My watch went from over 80% one evening and powered off shortly after I woke up the next morning. I'm charging it for the 3rd time today.
Since the 9.5.2 update, the battery life on my watch is poor. This morning, the battery went from 100% to 29% in less than 1.5 hours. I have model A2351. I’ve already tried the obvious, unpairing and resetting the watch. My iPhone is up to date. Rebooted both phone and watch several times.
Bought my Apple Watch Ultra a week ago, put the watch in the charger it came with the other night while it was also updating, woke up to the watch extremely hot to touch & stuck in reboot. 5 seconds it would show Apple logo & 5 seconds off. Tried to hard reset, didn’t work. After 30min of messing with it the screen went blank & hasn’t been able to turn on since. Have to send the watch in to be repaired.
I’ve been wearing my watch just to track my workouts since it doesn’t last more than 4-6 hours on a full charge. My battery health has decreased in a couple weeks from 96% to now 90%. Very frustrating.
Spent more time today troubleshooting why my heart rate isn’t captured. I cleaned the sensor and unpaired/repaired my phone. And confirmed all the settings and I do see the green light when it’s attempting to read my heart rate. Still cannot get the heart rate capability to work. Battery continues to drain excessively fast.
Edogcubed,
It seems like we’re just going to have to wait until the next update because it’s mostly a software issue which is very annoying.
But my watch battery is not lasting 18 hours - I have to charge it 3 or 4 times in a day... This can't be normal
Wayne, I agree with you. I feel like the update for the phone has also taken an impact but not as much. It’s definitely making me more hesitant on updating right away from now on, and that shouldn’t be the case.
@Edogcubed it still drains faster than before the update, but it’s not as bad of a drain as when I first updated and before the hard reset. I would still like for us to get another update to fix this issue.
My Series 8 drains overnight while I am sleeping and seems to barely drain during the day since the update. This update has been horrible so far on my battery. Before I was able to charge once a day or sometimes a day in a half, but not any longer. I have tried everything so I am guessing this is some kind of software thing since so many of us are having this issue since the update. I hope they figure it out soon and release a fix update sooner rather than later otherwise I may just need to send it back and try a different smartwatch. I like Apple because it has the smallest watch face of the major brands. My wrists are really small and the other brands are wider than my wrist in most cases.
@YetAnotherSQL - thank you for your reply! I downloaded the urgent release (16.5.1(c)) and was hoping that may help. When I powered on my watch yesterday it immediately started losing battery within 5 minutes.
I’m also thinking about install watchOS 10 beta but also have to install iOS 17 beta. Not sure if I’m adventurous enough. Lol. If I do the beta installs, I will report back on my results to help others.
There is a Best Buy close to me. I’m hesitant to spend money to replace the watch face when everything points to a SW condition that an update will hopefully address.
Battery drain on my Apple Watch after watchOS 9.5.2 update
