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Battery consumption in airplane mode

D

dcaccount

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 17, 2013
316
14
hello,
I have just bought an Apple Watch Series 2 and yesterday night to keep some battery for today, I have put the watch in airplane mode.

To my surprise, this morning when I checked battery status, I discovered that it drained from 62% to 30% in one night.

My question is if it normal. What is your experience?

Thanks,
Daniele
 
I'm assuming you didn't have it on the charger. Also, you may have had active applications running, 'Hey Siri' could be on, which uses the microphone for Listening to start.
 
Yes, it was not on the charger.
How can "heli Siri" be on with the watch in airplane mode?
 
dcaccount said:
Yes, it was not on the charger.
How can "heli Siri" be on with the watch in airplane mode?
Click to expand...

Then your misunderstanding, because if Hey Siri is on, it utilizes the microphone to search for your voice, regardless if Airplane Mode Is on. All Airplane mode does is disable the wifi and Bluetooth connection to your Phone. If the Watch is in Power Save, then only the time is active.

Again, if you have active applications running, this could be a contributing factor.
 
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dcaccount said:
I have put the watch in airplane mode.

To my surprise, this morning when I checked battery status, I discovered that it drained from 62% to 30% in one night.
Click to expand...
Depending on how many hours is "night," that sounds about right. The watch drops about 2-3%/hour in normal use. So, 8 hours would be on the order of the 30% drop you saw. Airplane mode is not a power saving mode, it simply turns off the radios. Those barely consume any power.
 
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The microphones for 'hey siri' are only listening when the device is unlocked, and the screen is on. If you leave the watch on a table and start yelling 'hey Siri' at it, it won't do anything.
The most likely cause of battery drain is because the watch is still switched on. Even with airplane mode enabled it's still a computer after all, so it will be doing things that use power.
 
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exxxviii said:
Depending on how many hours is "night," that sounds about right. The watch drops about 2-3%/hour in normal use. So, 8 hours would be on the order of the 30% drop you saw. Airplane mode is not a power saving mode, it simply turns off the radios. Those barely consume any power.
Click to expand...

It was about 10 hours
 
Relentless Power said:
Then your misunderstanding, because if Hey Siri is on, it utilizes the microphone to search for your voice, regardless if Airplane Mode Is on. All Airplane mode does is disable the wifi and Bluetooth connection to your Phone. If the Watch is in Power Save, then only the time is active.

Again, if you have active applications running, this could be a contributing factor.
Click to expand...

You are right, but Siri needs network to work so I'd expect Hey Siri to be automatically disabled when the Watch is in airplane mode.
Last night I left my Watch unplugged and the battery dropped by about 20%, but Watch wasn't in airplane mode so maybe there was something fetching data in background and 20% in 8 hours is quite normal.
I tried to leave it in airplane mode unplugged one night and it dropped by about 10%. iPhone loses about 2/3% of its battery power if I leave it in airplane mode during the night so maybe watch does something to consume battery even if network is off
 
Hi,
I own a series 0 apple watch that if put in airplane mode it loses about 10% of charging in the night ... always shutting it off.
because?
it's normal?
from what little I found around looks like you but nobody knows why!
[doublepost=1507133059][/doublepost]
dcaccount said:
It was about 10 hours
Click to expand...

??
 
exxxviii said:
Depending on how many hours is "night," that sounds about right. The watch drops about 2-3%/hour in normal use. So, 8 hours would be on the order of the 30% drop you saw. Airplane mode is not a power saving mode, it simply turns off the radios. Those barely consume any power.
Click to expand...

radios are a huge drain on the AW, especially if BLE is not available and it has to use wifi (or even LTE on S3), even more so if signal is weak, even more so if it has a lot of data to fetch (influenced by the number of apps in dock + number of apps with background app refresh on).

heart rate monitor every 5min is also quite power hungry, especially if you keep the watch band loose & it takes longer / it needs to activate the green leds (over the less power hungry IR ones) to get a reading.

involuntary movements could also wake the screen up. I suggest toggling on Cinema / Theater mode at night.

without airplane mode (but with phone w/ BT on near bed, hence minimal radio drain), with theater mode on & without a very snug fit on a milanese loop, my series 2 38mm loses less than 5% over an 8 hour night on wOS 4.
 
mine loses only 5% overnight with sleeptracking. So OP's watch is sick.
 
Yes, I have watchos 3 otherwise it would not work with 5c,
many times charging it in the afternoon in the evening with enough charge
 
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