Watch causes iPhone battery drain

T.Dev's post made it look into my battery drain issues a bit further. My battery usage on my phone didn't list any one app as being a big drain, including the watch. But after I rebooted my phone and checked again, the app RunKeeper was chewing up 26%. I disabled background app refresh on RunKeeper and removed the app from the watch. I no longer have drain issues.

So for me, I had to do a hard reboot on my phone to see the app that was draining my battery. Odd, but it worked.

I'd like to thank you Marius for reminding me about the runtastic app. I really thought my Apple watch was the root to all my battery drainage (along with using bluetooth of course 😟), but it did not start happening until after adding the runtastic app on both of these devices, in order to show my wife that her favorite app was available for her Apple watch, which I purchased for her and will be here in June. Just to make sure, I am going to test this theory once again after charging both devices, and disabling the location services for the runtastic app to see what happens. Don't get me wrong, I know full well that this app is the culprit of my my iPhone 6's vampire drainage, but if I can still keep the app under careful supervision and usage, then I will assure my wife and I that we can still use it, with the knowledge that it can be disabled after it has been used.

I have bluetooth on all the time on my iPhone. Just having Bluetooth on will not cause very much battery usage. What will cause usage from your phone are theirs the phone is using to communicate with the  Watch.

I've noticed the iPhone battery drains faster when using the Watch... makes sense. Not sure if it is causing me any real problem yet though. Probably depends if you routinely run the iPhone batter down most of the way prior to getting the watch (I didn't).

Yep, for me this is an absolute killer. I never have any issues with going a full day on my 5S and usually have 30-40% left but I was at 35% by 5pm on my first full day with the watch. And not using the watch itself that much - still had 64% battery on there!

Hopefully Apple will sort this out as it's unusable otherwise........

Both watch and iPhone 6s charged 100% @ 9am. It's 7:57pm now.

Phone - 94%

Watch - 39%

- 45 min workout

- took couple of phone calls

- sent some SMSs

- checked twitter

- notifications

- used remote app to operate Apple TV

- checked NYTimes headlines

- made couple of  Pay transactions

- checked weather

- played around with watch faces

I have an iPhone 5. My battery is new. It was replaced in December by Apple. I unplugged my phone and watch around 9:30am, went to work from 10-6. Went to dinner afterwards and now it's 8:51PM and my watch is at 31% Battery. My phone is surprisingly at 72%. Since I've gotten the watch I've had to work so tomorrow is my first day off. I think I'll probably use it even more so, so I think it will be interesting to see what happens to the batteries.

I understand why the battery dies faster on the phone now, but I think that in your situation that is ridiculous. Have you had a battery replacement?

I have a new 6+ which would normally give me 2 days life. charged both the watch and the phone yesterday haven't used either of them much but my phone is now at 15%. this is not good but I am sure there is something that can be done as some are seeing this and others not. have we made a setting change that drains the battery? Or installed some app that does it?

Dev

I don't have my Apple Watch yet but had a Pebble Watch for about 6 months, I could go three days between charges, I still have Bluetooth on as my car has hands free, still get at least three days between charging.

MY watch is not causing any noticeable extra battery drain on my phone.

Before you do that check your usage I found that one of my apps (runtastic pro) was using all the juice 65% so im hoping that has cracked it.

I have the same problem. Phone down to 25% by noon. Usually I am at 70% or more.