Persistent Apple Watch Battery Problems

I purchased an Apple watch series 8 and have had an absolutely unending problem of the battery performance of the watch.

The first problem began before I even put it on, the charging speed was unbelievably slow. At first I thought perhaps it was because it had been sitting on a shelf and the battery needed to recharge from absolute zero, or that it needed to index, or update. But after using the watch for over a week (it being fully updated as well as the paired iPhone, and optimized battery charge being disabled) it was still taking over 4 hours to go from 0-100 as pictured below. Using the hardware I did the watch was expected to go from 0-80 in around 45 minutes, in my application it was 0-20 in 45 minutes. It is important to note that the charger itself is not the problem. The charger is plugged directly into a (working) outlet with a genuine 20W apple usb-c charger into a genuine apple fast charging compatible usb-c cable. I insured both of these by cross referencing the serial code A2515 as outlined by apple themselves here.

The next problem is the battery's lifespan itself. On average I am getting about 8-10 hours out of the watch from 100%. I need to preface this with the fact that the watches battery health is at 89% at the time of writing as pictured below. Some leeway makes sense perhaps the watch would only last 16 hours instead of the rated 18 for example, but a 11% reduction in battery health should never result in a halving of battery life. This is despite the fact that I have done absolutely every single thing that can be done to improve battery life barring low power mode (which even in low power mode the longest I had ever gotten was barely over 13 hours). This includes disabling background app refresh, siri, gestures, always on display, wake on wrist raise, environmental sound measurements, notifications, lowering the brightness to the minimum, removing walkie talkie, and more that I cannot even remember. I mean EVERYTHING.

So the next step was to go nuclear, I erased and unpaired the watch and completely restored the iPhone using a computer connection to rule out a corrupted iOS installation or other phone-side issues, and set both up as brand new as detailed here. I let the watch run for a couple of days to allow for potential re-indexing and.. absolutely nothing changed whatsoever. So next I suspected the battery could be "leaky" and self discharging as outlined here. I followed the steps and I discovered my watch WAS in fact discharging, despite it being completely shut down over the course of just 4 hours the battery had drained 15% from doing nothing as shown in screenshots below. A normal rate would be 98% MAX if the battery was behaving normally. This explains both issues as perhaps the watch was NOT charging slowly but it was simply losing battery at the same time it was gaining it, giving the illusion it was being charged at an extraordinarily diminished rate. So problem solved right? No!

By this point I made an appointment at the genius bar with Apple. The watch was out of warranty and without apple care so I was expecting and willing to have to pay for a battery service. I had heard conflicting information about cases like these. Some say apple will refuse to service a battery above 80% period, some say they will only if it is defective, some say they don't ask questions as long as you pay the fee. So I arrive and the watch is hooked up the diagnostic systems and after about 5 minutes I am told "everything appears normal". I showed them the screenshots and battery app itself and was told that there is was doubt that is indicative of a hardware defect but unfortunately the policy states there is nothing they can do while the battery health displays above 80%.

Everything in my gut (and the forums) tells me that that information is not the correct policy. Despite this the only option I had is to use apples support which runs me in an infinite circle of "your battery health is fine" so I start a chat to explain the issue and am told that I should be allowed to have it repaired and to "go the genius bar" who then tells me to kick rocks. If it is the policy, I suppose I am looking for confirmation that despite the watch being defective and acknowledged as so there is still no way to service the watch and that the only option is to simply throw in the towel or purchase another watch. Thank you for any guidance or insight!