Apple Watch Battery Drain Issues after Update

Somehow my S4 recovered - I don’t exactly know, what helped - was it the unpairing/repairing, the hard reset of the watch (pressef crown and button until Apple Logo appears), the Restart of the iPhone12 or whatever else.

(un)fortunately I bought a Garmin Epix G2 in the meanwhile to continue to track my excercises, health and sleep and - mainly - because of Apples lack to communicate and to support on this case, which seems not to be a solitary issue of a single watch.

Tbh this was my last Apple device. I know, that other manufactorers may have the same or even worse problems. But that does not make this very issue acceptable to me. Customer communication is key - especially after major software updates, like the ones, which lead to this issue.

I am even wondering, if Apple had implemented some kind of hypercare after the release to monitor and adress unkown issues. I don’t have the feeling they had…

Good luck to everyone out there, struggeling with this battery drain issue. I wish to you, that these issues will get solved.

Cheers

Make sure to try turning off your noise app and turning off both your phone and watch and letting both sit for like 5 minutes before turning back on. My SE returned to normal after doing those procedures.

I’ve done all the suggestions. What helped was shutting off the noise app then resetting. The battery still not as good as it was before the update. I also found out that using the workout tracker along with the Bluetooth really drains the battery quickly. So I stopped using the watch as a fitness tracker. Stupid since that’s a big selling point for the Watch. After all that the battery life is better but now I noticed my watch is getting pretty hot while charging.

Updated my Apple watch 7 to 10.0.1. Updated my iPhone 12 to 17.0.3.

Before “upgrade” of watch OS, I only needed to charge my watch first thing every morning, and it charged to 100%. Now watch battery no longer charges to 100%; only charges to 75%, and by mid-day, it’s down to about 20%. By about 8PM it’s back down to 20-30%. Charge it again, and by morning it’s back down to 20-30%. No noise stuff on, no location services on, no fitness tracking on. It’s functioning just as a watch—not why people buy Apple watches, right?

Now I’ve discovered that if I turn my watch off before I put it on the charger, it will actually charge all the way to 100%. However, it still drains the battery just as quickly throughout the day.

My phone battery also drains faster since I “upgraded” my phone OS, but it’s not as drastic as the watch battery.

And of course I’ve done the turn off, wait, turn back on multiple times with both watch and phone. Also unpair/re-pair. Didn’t improve anything.

Someone noted that there is a watch OS update out, but it’s not showing up as available to me.

Apple needs to get their act together. This battery performance is unacceptable, especially given that it’s across a wide range of watch versions. It’s not like they can claim that there’s an issue with one particular watch in the series.

Same thing with my Apple Watch 6. The only thing that seems to help is turning off the always on display. That was the whole reason for getting the 6. After turning it off the battery drain is much slower.

I had the very same issue with the crown. At first I thought, it got broken somehow. Then I got used to not use the Crown. And finally it worked again - after 2 weeks and several hard resets, re-pairings of watch and phone, app disablings and so on…

For what it's worth, I made a backup of my S4 watch and deleted/repaired the whole thing back to "factory" WatchOS10. Battery life has been greatly improved. A big pain but if you have a backup and time to spare, it's been worth it for me.

Just to be clear, don't go looking for a way to make a backup your Apple Watch, or to restore it to "factory" watchOS, because you won't find either one. Backups are done automatically to your phone, so if you unpair and then re-pair the watch (old or new one) to your phone it copies back most of settings from the backup. Excluded from the backup is (among other things) Apple Pay credit cards and the passcode, so you will need to set these up again. You can also erase the watch from the Settings app on your watch or in the Watch app on your phone, but it seems unpairing it from your phone does the same thing. I'm not sure if either method has any advantages since both restore your watch from the backup on you phone.

I have the same problem with the watch running down to about 35% since the update. I haven’t changed my daily routine. Before the update I would run the battery down to a consistent 45 to 50 percent. I used to start my day with 93%. Now it starts at 90%. I always charge it up and wear it while sleeping.

Yup! My phone and watch 7 both drain incredibly fast. It’s happened on several OS releases. To be honest for as expensive as these devices are anymore you would think that issues like this within the OS would be non existent. To be truthfully honest this is the last straw for me as I’ll be switching to a Google Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel Watch 2 within the next month. The lack of innovation with Apple anymore is so disappointing and issues that come along with a simple software release like this are unacceptable.

Charged my watch before sleeping. It said it was fully charged. Slept with it on. Woke up and went to work and it’s now at 20%. Put it on low battery mode. 5 minutes later it’s at 10%. Everything on it was so slow the day prior. It was glitching my phone (15) as well. Watch is pretty useless now unless there’s an update to fix it. Found before my iPhone 15’s battery drained more quickly and I read it’s because I needed to update my watch. Now it seems the battery issues have moved over to the watch :/

I’m on Watch OS 10.1 and mine last 3-5 hours with cellular set to off and the listening app set to off. Watch is basically unusable for daily use. I have a case open with Apple but no resolution yet.

I've just spent four frustrating days with various Apple Support people ranging from chat agents to Senior Support people. I asked several of them if this was a known problem (battery drain after WatchOS 10.0) and all of them said they had not heard of it before me. They have run several remote hardware tests, including a battery test, which the watch passed. They had me unpair the watch and then re-pair and set up as a new watch (not a restore from backup). That didn't help. Now, they want me to call back and speak to a Support Engineer, but only after we have kept a detailed log of software usage along with battery percentage after each app is used.

At this point I'm fed up. Every time I speak with a new agent I have to wait on hold while they review the case and go over stuff that has already been covered and which should be in the chat transcripts and reports.

They still won't acknowledge that this is an OS problem, not a hardware problem and not a user software problem.

I will not contact them again. I will never buy AppleCare+ again as it seems to just lead to an incredibly frustrating waste of time. Easier to just buy a new watch and be done with it.

This is especially frustrating coming from someone who has been an Apple Fan since 1984 and a shareholder with, let's say, more than 100 but less than 1000 shares of Apple stock.

At best I'm sad and at worst I'm angry.

You know they’re lying. How many people are on this thread complaining about the same thing. Maybe they don’t check this thread. I don’t know. All I know for sure is that I get Apple discussion alerts about this issue several times a day. They know there’s a problem. Hopefully they can fix it.

"You might need to go into the genesis bar and have them lay hands on it. It is hard do support to diagnose things over chat and on the phone "

I live in northeast Thailand, which has exactly two Apple stores; both in Bangkok which is 250 kilometers away.