WatchOS 10 battery life

My SE gen 1 was more than 50% worse when I updated to watch os10.

when I tried resetting and restoring from a backup there was no improvement.

eventually I restored and set up as new watch and it is acceptable now. I have 65% left at a point in the day where I would normally be close to zero.

Gilles wrote:

So I guess to resolve I need to set as new Watch. Really a pain, but if it's solved afterwards, I'll give it a try.

You don't really lose much by erasing and setup-as-new except the time used for the extra pairing. Almost all the essential data is still in your iPhone, it will sync as you bring back any missing apps on the watch. The only thing you might have to rework manually will be a few custom configured watch faces.

My advice is to do a vanilla setup as new watch, then test for a day or two before adding any extra apps on the watch. When you are sure it is working better, go to the bottom of the list in the iPhone's Watch app and you will see the third party apps which you were using - each with their own Install button. Do them one at a time, make sure you have updated the parent app on your iPhone, and test before moving to the next app to reinstall. That way if there is a problem you know which one is guilty for bad battery load.

My watch SE (2) with 94% battery health was lasting less the three hours with the watch faces constantly crashing and restarting. Removing all weather compilations from the faces and closing the weather app in the background seems to have fixed the problem. You could try doing the same thing.

The most useful advice I have seen so far is to turn off the Noise app in the Watch settings. Having done this hasn't returned battery life to what it was before watchOS 10, but it looks like my Series 5 will go at least 20 hours now, when it was previously much less. Enough to get through a day at least, and until Apple fixes this problem. Hope this helps someone else.

Scoobydoo1787 wrote:

Ended up resetting my watch completely, deleting every single convenience app, and just leaving it as a basic stock watch and it’s back to the battery life I had before the update.

You are not forever doomed to using only the stock apps. Most third-party apps are not causing any issues. I have quite a few and, after 24 hours, I usually have between 15 and 20% battery left. That's with an old battery, too. The trick is figuring out which third-party apps are causing the problem.

You can try adding your third-party apps back one or two at a time. If you start seeing a decrease in battery life, you'll be able to fairly easily identify the app causing the problem. Delete just those apps.

Turning off the rain complication has returned my battery to normal; 2days between charges. (Series 7, 92% health)

Weather complication is a known problem. Pin the weather app in the widgets stack instead.

(swipe up face or rotate the crown)

Wrong. Unpaired and paired it again. Fixed the issue. The problem was the upgrade. Apple support agreed that this was an issue.

Had the same issue. Apple wanted me to go to retail store or mail it in. I unpaired and paired again, fixed the problem

Doing much better today after removing widgets that came up after update. I charged the watch (7) around 7pm last night and am at 55% at around 1:30 today.

MarkESXUK wrote:

It’s not right 5 days ago it was doing 2days plus between charges, I charged last night and will have to tonight. series 7

It can take a while for the watch to finish up the background tasks after an update. Some people have reported that unpairing and re-pairing the watch has made a difference. But, for better or worse, expecting to get battery life of more than twice what Apple advertises as a best case may doom you to disappointment.

So following on from yesterday, it may help others.

I removed the weather app (specifically rainfall) complication from the watch face, my watch has now used 36 % since around 7pm last night…it’s now 3.15pm

Gilles wrote:

I think this is why.

Watch 5 have roughly reached 75/80% health.

And it looks like Watch OS 10 is killing old batteries.

If your battery is below 80%, it needs to be replaced. You were going to start having issues regardless of whether or not you had upgraded.

Dupre47 wrote:

I can literally watch the battery life go down as I’m watching it. Please, Apple, fix this asap!!!!!! I update my watch and all Apple devices immediately trusting things won’t go bad but 10.0.1 watch update is terrible for battery life!

You should be on 10.0.2 by now

This update includes bug fixes and important security updates for your Apple Watch.

For information on the security content of Apple software updates, please visit this website: Apple security releases - Apple Support

I am pretty sure it is all related to the new iOS. It has drained my watch batter from 100% to 10% in a matter of 2 hours. I have notice remove MobyFace app from phone and put the watch on Airplane mode today. The battery did drain but in a more normal way. I put it back on charge at 45% to wear tomorrow or tonight (maybe). Hopefully a new iOS is released soon to remedy the situation.