Watch os3 series 1 dead battery by afternoon

JPFII 's fix helped me too. Resetting the settings is almost a bigger pain than completely wiping a phone tho. Wow.

One thing I noticed tho: watch battery (and better activity tracking -- which also seemed to go bad at the same time the battery drain happened) was great UNTIL I reactivated the ability to send SMS texts from my MacBook and iMac. Watch was at 100% for the first 3 hours of the day. I just finished setting up "text forwarding" on my phone and I'm watching my watch battery go down down down. It's at 92%, losing 8% in just the past 45 minutes.

I'll watch this and comment back after I've had a chance to test it further.

Yeah I have the 38mm Apple Watch series 1 too. It had great battery life in the beginning, but then it went downhill after a month of using it. Now it looses 10% or more every hour I have class. And better yet just today it lost 40% in just 2 hours. That really shocked me because I don’t even use my watch for the smart features because the battery dies too fast. Awhile ago I turned them off and every setting including the haptic feedback all the way down. I only use my watch for the workouts that I do after school but guess what, there’s not battery left over. I even got it checked up and the Genius Bar said it was a software issue, so they “fixed it” -yeah right.

I'm experiencing the same problem. It took five hours for my watch to update. Day one, battery completely drained by early evening. Day two, and it's draining faster than normal. I don't have many apps on it, and I used the fitness app once for about 30 seconds.

I had the same issue with the watch, an original sports model. It took nearly a half day to download the software. As soon as it updated, the battery starting draining rapidly. The second day, on a full charge, the battery drained at about 5 percent an hour--although once I clocked it losing 2 percent in just 15 minutes, and with very little use or activity. So far I've paired and re-paired, reset to factory default and and restored as a new watch, pulled off all activity related apps, turned off background refresh, etc., and even running the watch in grey scale. I used to lose about 3 percent an hour -- now it's draining at twice the speed. Had one call with a sr apple tech but he wasn't able to help much. So I have a genius bar appt tomorrow. Hopefully that will shed some light.

Good to know I'm not the only one who noticed this...

Today was my first full day with the Series 1 (38mm), and the subpar battery performance is disappointing.

I was previously wearing the original 38mm model, so the comparison is fresh. On average, that battery would last from 5:30a all the way until ~10p (including multiple walking/running exercises throughout the day) before needing a charge.

Back to the Series 1...strapped on around 8am this morning, down to less than 10% battery by 8pm. What gives? At this rate, when I head back to work Monday, I can pretty much expect it to be dead by 5-6pm. I've never had to worry about bringing its charger with me to work, but it looks like that's about to change...

I use my watch mainly for Activity/Exercise apps, and have almost zero apps installed. I also turn off / try to control all potentially battery-draining features: raise to wrist, screen brightness at 50% or less, minimal notifications, background app refresh, reduce motion/transparency, etc.

The only glaring difference between the original model I had and this one is watchOS3, so I'm not sure if they can curb this issue with an update.

Update: Yesterday I thought my watch had drained in five hours. I was able to see the "low battery clock" on time. I put the watch on the charger, and it showed the watch face and had plenty of charge left. I took the watch off the charger, and then it froze again. I had to use a pin to reset the watch. Even after that, I had to try turning it off and on several times before it would work properly. Ever since it has been working fine, and the battery is now draining normally.

I am getting the same issues, although mine started yesterday. It worked absolutely fine for 5 days with watchOS 3. I have no idea what changed yesterday to make it start draining so quickly. I have reset the Watch once and I am currently in the process of unpairing and pairing as a new Watch. Hopefully that will help.

I updated my watch on 9/16 and watch worked fine until 9/19. Battery is draining very rapidly. Today I watched my battery go from 100% to 79% in a matter of 30 minutes! all I did was drive to work! My watch was completely dead by 0930. I was able to go 2 days without having to charge my watch before the update. I turned off all the background refresh and my activity was the same as any normal day at work. This is a serious problem!

So the day the new Watch Update came out- I updated it (it took forever, but it eventually finished). I've been using my watch fine- normal battery life of about 1.5 days- all was fine. BUT YESTERDAY (9/20) it all changed. Now I charge up my watch at 10am, its fine at 6pm- and then it crashes from 70% to the 10% warning by 10pm. I'm not doing anything different or new- I've installed nothing new, but my battery just dies. This is 2 days in a row so far.

Anyone know if there was some secret update that hit us watch people yesterday?

Several times my watch has indicated low power. I just reset by holding the two buttons down until the Apple shows on the screen and the functions are back with a battery over 50%.

Waiting for an update to fix this silly problem.

I'm having the same issue though my update didn't take that long, in fact it went pretty fast. However before the update I could wear my watch for 24 hours, still have 30%, charge it while I got ready for work and repeat. Now it's dying by 3:00pm. Not happy about this. I've closed the apps and all and it's still an issue.

I had the same issue. I went to Watch App > General > Background App Refresh, then turned off a lot of the apps. Watch on at 7 am and 2 pm I am at 86%. Yesterday same times and I was at 30%. Seems to help me so far. Or it could be that I unpaired my watch from my iPhone 6 and and restored it to iPhone 7. Maybe something within the reinstall it worked better. But I would try the background app refresh.

Hope that helps!

I had similar experiences to what's listed here already - having as few apps as possible, only using the workout feature once a day, a battery life only at 40% by 5pm.

I've also unpaired my watch and reset it. No improvement.

I finally took my watch back to the store and the associate said that most people have been buying the series 2 watch so there's hasn't been much battery feedback on the series 1. He suggested I return, which I did,and wait a couple weeks and see what reviews are on series 2 and buy that one.

My return was easy, the suggestion to try to me upsell me on the more expensive model, I'm not so sure about. I don't feel I should spend more on a watch that has all these bells and whistles that I don't need, with the hopes of a better battery.

Maybe all of us who posted on this forum got a bad egg with the series 1???

For now I'm gonna hold on a watch purchase.

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 ....