Watch OS 3 Draining Battery Very Quickly

This makes sense as my battery life has improved with each passing day. I haven't been using it for any heavy applications though. Will see what happens when I run with it on the weekend.

Update********

After taking off background refresh and waiting 24 hours I am down to about 4.5% of battery loss an hour, I was at 3%-3.5% on Watch OS 2.2.2.

I received a phone call from Phil at Apple Engineering today, we discussed the problem and he suggested that we install a Profile that would keep my logs for a couple of days and after that period we should find out what the problem is. He also said that it is normal within the first 24 hours of an upgrade to have a higher than normal battery usage due to the phone and watch readjusting to one another after the update.

I will keep everyone updated

Add me to the list, I have exactly the same problem. Battery now lasts about 12 hours. Before watchOS 3 update, battery was still about 70% by the end of the day. Lets hope Apple fix this soon, currently the watch does not last 'all day', in fact not even half a day!

Hi, I'm glad to report that I've been wearing my watch (and using as per usual) for the last 11.5 hours and I still have 64% battery left! That is actually better than what I used to get on the previous 2 OS!

Just to give a bit of what happended in the last couple of days: I spoke to Apple Support yesterday morning and they asked me to restart the Watch but that didn't help so they suggested I unpair and pair it again which I did after coming home last evening but didn't notice a big change in battery consumption till I went to bed few hours later. I woke up this morning and forwarded some emails from the discussion group to Apple Support and couple of hours later, I got a call from Phil with Apple Support who said that battery drainage is normal the first couple of days after a big OS update since the watch would be learning the apps new behaviour and constantly communicating with the iPhone. As I was talking to him I looked at my watch and noticed that I've been wearing it for 2.5 hours and I still had 96% battery left so I shared that with Phil and he asked me to monitor it for couple of days and said he'll call me back on Sunday to check. It's worth noting that I reduced the background app refresh to 12 out of 37 possible ones in my case and I don't use my watch for any games or social media; I use it for text, emails, calls, occasionally the Breathe app kicks in (it's awsome by the way:), Starva every couple of days (not since the last OS upgrade though) and few other notifications here and there from different apps plus some background activities from few apps of course, so I'd say medium usage

...update since my reply on Thursday.

My father was over today. He has the original watch. Over a year old. Running OS2. His battery as of 1030 pm was 67%. He has basically everything runiing on the watch. Again his battety was at 67%.

MY series 1 watch with a brand new battery, running next to nothing and has been sitting idle since about 1 pm (within range of my iphone) had only 51% battery!

Something is WRONG!

Im not buying the whole "os needs to adjust" line.

Apples series 1 watch has a battery issue and I'm certain it is software related. Im returning the watch until this issue is resolved.

I'm not seeing that fast a depletion, but whereas I used to "put it to bed" with maybe 40% battery remaining, it's more like 10% now.

Yesterday I called AppleCare as the battery drain was so visible - it was losing battery at a rate of about 15% an hour and I am not into charging the Watch during the day.. it is ridiculous. The help desk person did admit she had also had the same issue with her own Watch and what she did was un-pair the iPhone Watch App and the Watch and then re-pair it. I did not relish this solution - its like the AppleCare computer solution where they suggest reinstalling the system and software to "cure" all ills and you think with 2 or 3 terabytes how long is this going to take?

However she assured me that her Watch had regained normal battery life. I was worried that I would lose all the health/exercise history - something that occurred once before when I had removed the pairing. In the afternoon I could see I would need to recharge the Watch before going out in the evening so I decided I would give the re-pairing a go. I was pleased it gave the option of "restore from a backup with a series of prior dates" and HOPED that it did not reinstall all the same issues. It took a while but I now have the re-paired Watch - the charging after this was strange.. it went from 10% to 31% quickly and then dropped back to 29% then 21% and it would have been half an hour before charging actually progressed. The charge to 100% took a very long time - about 2 hours and finished just before I went out. Everything including Health and Exercise items seemed to be okay and the stored data on the phone was okay... But Stockard Watch App which is a big favourite on the Watch because along with ApplePay, I never need to get my purse out for loyalty cards - Stocard just will not connect.. hopefully Stockard themselves will rectify that if others have to report that issue. I turned "General/Background Refresh" (something people here had suggested as a solution but I didn't find worked to improve battery life) back on and selected items like Activity, Alarms, Apple Store, Breathe, Calendar, Camera, Heart Rate, Maps, Messages, Phone, Settings, Wallet, Weather and Withings back on. Overnight I did the normal charging and the Watch was on my wrist at 7.30am. It is now 1.30pm and I have 76% - I've done an hour+ workout so I think the re-pairing has certainly worked to improve battery life and would suggested others do that too. Remember to do a backup in iTunes of your iPhone before starting the unpairing of the Watch.

I have the solution !! While my battery life was initially dreadful some app must have been continually running because in my General settingsd on the phone under Usage, the phone was showing almost as much usage time as it was standby time...yet i wasnt using the watch actively...there was a gremlin. Battery was draining dramatically, 6 hours could see it reduce to zero right after the OS 3.0 upgrade to my series one watch.

I did a complete reset, erase all content and settings and start from scratch, not restore and the watch is now fine!! wonderful battery life again and all the benefits of watch OS3.0. Apparently there is a hiccup in the upgarde process but if you subsequently reset, no problems!!

I Had this problem as well. However I seemed to be able to improve it significantly by following the steps someone else provided of closing all applications on the phone and shutting it down and then shutting down the watch. Turned everything back on and my battery life is no longer dropping in a matter of minutes. Seems to be pretty close to what is was on os2.

UPDATE:

I am also cautiously optimistic regarding the issue. While un-re-pairing, erasing all content, removing background app refresh and setting up as a new watch didn't seem to help initially (day 1-2), it did seem to resolve on its own (day 3).

Normally, I do 90+ minutes of logged exercise, today I only did 30 minutes (biking with heart rate monitor), but the battery is not dead before 4pm like previous two days. Maybe it will die on a 90+ minute exercise day, but given the past two days I am feeling much better.

I'm finding that my high-battery-usage situation may have just been a "one-off" situatio, or otherwise a temporary situation. I didn't make any changes, and it seems to be much more normal now. Maybe it was because of extra power consumed updating apps after changing to WatchOS 3.

So, people keep posting things like "wait a few days and the battery will improve". Im finding these post/statements hard to believe.

Im curious how many people updated to ios10?

Im also curious how many people who updated to ios10 noticed "significant" change in battery loss?

I can honestly say I noticed no such loss going from ios9 to 10. Nothing.

Im not an engineer or an IT person but to say give it a few days seems silly.

Upgrading to iOS 10, I haven't noticed any difference in battery usage on my iPhone 6+, nor on my iPad Pro. I haven't done any precise measurements or calculations in that regard, but I haven't noticed any difference.

On the other hand, I have noticed a few things that seem a little bit snappier under iOS 10. I can't report specific details though, that's just a collective impression.

I've also been in contact with apple support and have been running the test software to create logs for the apple engineers to analyze.

In my case it's very simple to fix the problems, when I remove all third party apps and stick with only the apple stock apps I have no drain. As soon as I install the third party apps the drain starts again. I've been able to recreate this scenario multiple times.

As I didn't really use the third party apps on my watch anyway I'm keeping them off for now until the issue has been tracked down and fixed.