Watch causes iPhone battery drain

Yes I have experienced exactly the same. After removing runtastic from the watch I no longer have battery issues on neither phone or watch. Since runtastic can't yet use your apple watch heart rate sensor I'll just use in on the phone like I have until the gps function is fixed and it is alowed to use the watch heart rate sensor.

I can imagine other third party apps that make use of location services can also cause battery troubles. For now I just stick with apples default apps.

The problem is that when you launch a Watch app that uses GPS, like the SeaNav or Boat Beacon marine navigation watch apps on your watch, it stays running even when it's not showing on the watch face and/or another app (e.g. the clock) is showing. As it is running it will keep asking the iPhone for gps info which will eat battery on your iPhone. The solution is to "Force stop" the SeaNav app on your Watch when you have finished using it. Here's how to do this:- With the SeaNav app showing on your Watch screen press and hold the side button below the Digital Crown for a few seconds. The next screen you see features buttons for Power Off, Power Reserve and Lock Device. When you see this screen press and hold the side button again until you see SeaNav disappear and be replaced by the home screen.

There are more instructions for how to do a force stop here:-

http://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/apple/how-force-quit-apple-watch-app-3611762/

We need a way to exit the SeaNav app on the watch more easily - either from the iPhone or more directly from within the SeaNav app running on the watch or add a button in the app to say "Turn off gps". I hope Apple come up with a more elegant way of managing this (a lot of folks with fitness and cycling apps are complaining to Apple about battery drain) in a future release.

In the mean time I hope that helps you with your gps assisted app - just remember to force quit it when you don't need it running.

I've solved the problem with iPhone (5s) battery drain for me.

First day with Apple Watch my Phone lost > 70% of it's battery (at normal this is only about 40%). This battery usage isn't asigned to a special app (Runtastic, Comanion...) The phone just does't get in standby mode anymore.

Maybe this is helpfull:

In my Wifi there is a whitelist for allowed mac adresses (a rather trivial security setting) this setting was preventing the watch from connecting to wifi at home. I think the watch continues to ask the phone for correct credentials for the wifi, so the phone can not suspend to standby.

After allowing the watch mac adress to enter the wifi (by turning off this ******** setting on my router) and resetting the watch the problem was solved.

To see if this is your problem too, look into battery usage in the phone. If the active time is nearly the time since the last battery charge this maybe the same problem (with maybe the same solution).

Sorry for my poor english.

the Bluetooth connection is on all day so that can wear out battery on both. Try getting a mophie juice pack.

Hi

3 weeks ago I bought a new apple watch and linked it to my iphone 5. Both the watch and my iphone drained like crazy. I went back to the Apple Story (twice) and got absolutely great support/service. In first instance as it looked like there was communication problem between phone/watch they replaced the watch for a new one and changed some settings (along the advice you find on the web); I gave it another try. Despite some improvement I went back. They did further analysis as no hardware issues where found the only remaining solution (unfortunately) was to reinstall my iphone. I did a full reset back to factory settings & set the phone up as new. This solved all the issues/problems. Despite quite intensive usage the watch only consumes some 45-60% in full day (07:00-23:00). The drainage of the phone is a bit more (10-20% more by end of day) than before I bought my latest gadget but not dramatically more.

hope this helps.

This worked for me! I'm not sure if it was doing both the mac address whitelist and/or the reset/pair new watch (not form backup) but my iPhone battery no longer is drained.

Anyone having this issue should try this! I first paired my watch and phone at the store. After a day of owning the watch I noticed my iPhone battery was draining (by 2pm it was at 20%). I read this post and went home, updated my router to have a mac whitelist, added all of my home devices including my watch (which my router said was not connected to wifi). After doing the mac whitelist I reset my phone and did a clean pair, I did not use backup files to pair my watch and phone.

As soon as it was done pairing I saw my watch was showing connected to wifi within my router's mac address settings. Again, not sure if I had to do the mac address whitelist step, but it couldn't hurt. Maybe it was just the reset and re-pairing from home where my router was.

A few ways to know you may have this issue.

- When looking at your battery usage settings you'll see your usage and standby times are almost identical. Even if you've only used your phone for a few minutes it will show that your usage times match standby.

- Set your auto-lock time to 1 minute. Then don't touch your phone for one minute. If your screen does not go black after a minute you probably have this issue.

As the original poster said, the watch is constantly asking the phone for access to wifi, which keeps the phone from going into standby mode. This will eat up your battery.

Sorry but after a day the error reoccoured even with wifi whitelist enabled. The drain issue is reported with wifi since ios 6. Maybe this is not a special problem about the watch.

Your phone is old and so it has old battery technology. Try upgrading to a new iphone. OR try replacing the iphone 5 battery with a new one (remember to calibrate the new battery once installed)

Apple has sorted it out by making new phones with bigger battery capacity. The issue here is your 5s, sorry. Try a new phone.