Watch OS 3 Draining Battery Very Quickly

Bizarrelay today I've had the watch on for two hours now. And the battery still says 100%. As fantastic as this is, I don't believe that reading at all. It has never held at that number for more than 30 mins at most after taking it off charge. So I now don't believe the new OS is reading the battery correctly. I suspect the reading is not going to change throughout the day but will keep an eye on it

Hi,

i have the same problem. At the last day's i tested something.

1. Watch reset / Configured as new watch (no backup install)

2. The Battery works the first Day perfekt.

3. The second day, the Battery drains to about ~8% in one hour

4. The Third Day i take the watch at the morning with (100 % after load) AND do a hard reset on watch/iphone -

THE Battery works this day perfect !

5. At the next day without a hard reboot at the morning.... same drain ~8% per hour .....

on this day i made the airplane mode at the watch on ... but the drain go on ....

I think something in watchos3 is buggy ....

I have the same problem too! Maybe it's cuz they removed the function of saving electricity. 😟 :@ Hope they'll recover it in the next update!!

I've had a few random days of complete battery drain after all the recent updates. Today I noticed background app refresh had all apps enabled in the Watch app (something I know i customized when watchOS 3 came out). I customized my settings again and closed out of the app, then decided to check it to insure it stuck. It does not hold the custom settings after closing the Watch app. Currently, it's only keeping the setting if I completely disable app refresh. This is likely a major culprit in battery drain. I've also rebooted my phone and watch with no change in the refresh setting behavior. It only sticks if completely disabled.

I had this same problem regarding background app refresh keep switching on.

I Fixed it be resetting and repairing the watch. I subse had problems with the workout app (my current chief suspect).

i Managed to fix this by turning the backg app refresh for the workout app off. Then I turned off background app refresh entirely before turning it back on. This then held my settings

THis may help you

After thinking mine was improving this evening it has gone back to a really bad battery situation. This morning it was 100% at about 7 o'clock, at about 2 o'clock this afternoon it was 61% and about 9pm I looked at my watch and found it was totally discharged to the extend that all there is is just the time of the red lightning symbol. Since then it is taking ages on the even start charging. APPLE must do something to rectify this error. It is devaluing the watch totally.

I put it on the charger at 9pm - the red charger signal stayed on for 30 mins then very slowly it went up to 19%, then dropped back to 11%, then lost all its charge and got very hot, then went to 0 again and red signal. It restarted with the Apple Signal twice. I began to think I had a dead battery - then put it on my other charger and at last it is progressing on the charge. I looked for old watches but as I have used the Apple Watch solidly for a year, my 3 normal battery watches had all run out of battery. Not very happy Apple.. there is something wrong with the Apple Watch or wrong with the OS3 - needs an update desperately.

Charmian Gaud wrote:

I put it on the charger at 9pm - the red charger signal stayed on for 30 mins then very slowly it went up to 19%, then dropped back to 11%, then lost all its charge and got very hot, then went to 0 again and red signal. It restarted with the Apple Signal twice. I began to think I had a dead battery - then put it on my other charger and at last it is progressing on the charge. I looked for old watches but as I have used the Apple Watch solidly for a year, my 3 normal battery watches had all run out of battery. Not very happy Apple.. there is something wrong with the Apple Watch or wrong with the OS3 - needs an update desperately.

That sounds very much like a hardware issue. I'd make an appointment at the Genius Bar. When you go, take your charging cable as well and have them look at that.

I've seen no difference in my battery life with watchOS 3. I've still got 30-40% battery at around midnight when I put my watch on charge. I take it off again at 6:30am.

Well after a few days of working fine, back to huge battery drain. Trying to decide whether to bother to reset it or not. Hoping whatever this is can be addressed soon by apple in a software update. Really seems like it is something running in the background but you can't tell on the watch what it is.

I would do a forced restart of the watch to fix a bug like this.

Restart your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Doesn't help.

I'm convinced it is the workout app. There is also something buggy in the background refresh system. The iOS companion app doesn't keep the settings form background refresh. I spuriously also get spinning wheels of crashed apps on the watch occasionally.

Odd there isn't more buzz about this. Pretty clear watchOS has significant bugs in it that are affecting many users.

I, too, have been fighting with battery life on my Series 1 AW since updating to OS 3.0. Previously I would get WELL over 18 hours of battery life even using my Nike + Run App, heart rate, etc. Now I get barely 12 hours and have had to remove all apps from the dock, shut off heart rate and background refresh, uninstall a whole bunch of third-party apps, and turn off wrist raise (and I've never used the workout app). In speaking with Apple a few times now, they seem surprised that there is a battery issue with OS 3.0. They say nothing is wrong with my battery so that tells me its the OS.

It's very disappointing that I have to remove a whole bunch of features that I had previously used just to keep my battery from dying (and not really even taking advantage of the OS 3.0 features). I hope Apple fixes this soon!

I'd actually prefer to downgrade to 2.2.2, but this is apparently not possible. I too sent diagnostics to Apple, and they also confirmed my battery was fine.

I can get back to approximately the same battery life by turning off the background refresh and not using the workout app. If I use my watch the way I did before watchOS 3, I'm down to about 5-6 hours, tops.

Got on with support and they report that this problem has not been reported. Mine is going in for "repair" I am not optimistic as this is my second apple watch in 9 months. The first one had the wrist detection sensor go bad. Sent in for repair and got it back with no repair made and the wrist detection still not working. Sent in a second time and got a different one back. So, I'll send it in for repair and see what happens. Will report back, diagnostics show app crashing but they could not tell which one/ones.