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Battery life worse with Apple Watch

H

harlenmm77

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 5, 2016
325
179
Bought a watch on wed. Phone took a complete dump on Thursday and was stuck on the apple logo all day until I did a full restore at night. Today the battery is awful, lost 10% in 2 hours which is 4-5x worse than it normally is.

I'm afraid to restart my phone because that's what did me in yesterday.

Any ideas? About to box up the watch and return it.
 
I have owned three different Apple watches and none have drained my iPhone battery. In fact I found my 6S+ and 7+ battery to last longer as I do not have to look at my phone as often.

You have something else wrong. Did you watch pairing go OK?
 
So far, the Watch is a coincidence, not a cause. More troubleshooting/isolation is required to establish causality.

Unpair the Watch, and see if that affects the situation with the iPhone. If unpairing doesn't change things, then the Watch isn't the likely cause.

Check Settings > Battery to see if there's an app using unusually large amounts of battery.

After you did the "full restore," did you restore from backup? If you restored from backup, you muddied the waters. Operating the phone "clean" after a restore (as an experiment) removes apps and data as a potential cause - points more clearly to hardware (failing battery, for example).
 
I have a Series 0 AW that I've been using for a year and a half with a iPhone 6 and 7P. In my experience there's is not much noticeable effect on the phone battery. The battery life on the watch itself is better than ever.
 
So far today.
a70b011894c287fffb327e66db44c94d.png


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I was having zero trouble before yesterday. The phone was working flawlessly. I was at 29 days without a restart and had zero hiccups and zero lag.
 
my battery on my iPhone 6 drains noticeably faster than when i didn't have my AW. I could go home with roughly 70% left and would last until i went to sleep. Now, i need to charge it before i leave work because it's down to roughly 20-30% by 4pm. nothing else changed on my iPhone.
 
In the last 11 minutes my phone was awake for 7 of them. I got one notification from Facebook in that time period.
 
harlenmm77 said:
In the last 11 minutes my phone was awake for 7 of them. I got one notification from Facebook in that time period.
Click to expand...
What does this mean?

I've had an Apple Watch for 20 months now. There is no noticeable battery drain at all. Maybe your cellular service signal isn't as strong. That alone will destroy battery life.

Not sure why you are saying you have bad battery life. Your screenshots put you at about 9 hours per charge. That is good.
 
It's significantly worse than it was just a few days ago. I was getting 14-15 hours easily earlier this week. Only difference is the watch was added.

And out of 11 minute of sitting on my desk untouched , the CPU was in use 7 minutes out of it
 
Mlrollin91 said:
What does this mean?

I've had an Apple Watch for 20 months now. There is no noticeable battery drain at all. Maybe your cellular service signal isn't as strong. That alone will destroy battery life.

Not sure why you are saying you have bad battery life. Your screenshots put you at about 9 hours per charge. That is good.
Click to expand...

The usage shown in the chart isn't what I've been using it for. It's running the CPU for reasons other than me using it. Out of the 4+ hours of use, maybe 2 was me actually using it.
 
harlenmm77 said:
The usage shown in the chart isn't what I've been using it for. It's running the CPU for reasons other than me using it. Out of the 4+ hours of use, maybe 2 was me actually using it.
Click to expand...

Well if you add up your usage listed above it does each 4.4 hours. Clearly something is running in the background as your usage and standby times are very close. That is not watch related, that is iPhone related. if the CPU is in use 7/11 minutes, then there is a rogue processor on your phone. Try a hard reset and recharge to a 100% or use Xcode (if you have a Mac). Launch instruments and watch your iPhone CPU usage. It will show whats running. Apple Watch will not make your iPhone CPU run.
 
Mlrollin91 said:
Well if you add up your usage listed above it does each 4.4 hours. Clearly something is running in the background as your usage and standby times are very close. That is not watch related, that is iPhone related. if the CPU is in use 7/11 minutes, then there is a rogue processor on your phone. Try a hard reset and recharge to a 100% or use Xcode (if you have a Mac). Launch instruments and watch your iPhone CPU usage. It will show whats running. Apple Watch will not make your iPhone CPU run.
Click to expand...

I understand that. But something happened when I paired the watch because 29 days straight without a reboot and zero issues. Pair the watch, phone won't accept a full charge over the next night, woke up and it was at only 77%,and then it restarts to just an apple logo forcing a full restore.
 
harlenmm77 said:
I understand that. But something happened when I paired the watch because 29 days straight without a reboot and zero issues. Pair the watch, phone won't accept a full charge over the next night, woke up and it was at only 77%,and then it restarts to just an apple logo forcing a full restore.
Click to expand...

Maybe not turning your phone off for 29 days caused it to glitch out. Or maybe your battery has suddenly become defective which is entirely possible. The fact that it stopped charging is a sign of that. I had an iPhone that always stopped charging at 80% unless I did a hard reset. Then it would charge to 100%. It was a defective battery. Apple Watch is coincidence. There is a larger issue at play and it's sounds hardware related.
 
The only thing I can suggest is a hard reset and using Xcode if possible to track real time processor information. Otherwise maybe unpair your watch, restore your phone and repair your watch back. Something has gone corrupt on your iPhone. But it's definitely not because of your watch. There is zero chance your watch is causing 5-6 hours of decreased battery life.
 
I don't have a mac, so I can't do that. I'm afraid to do a hard reset until I'm home since that failed miserably yesterday
 
harlenmm77 said:
I don't have a mac, so I can't do that. I'm afraid to do a hard reset until I'm home since that failed miserably yesterday
Click to expand...

What do you mean a hard reset failed? If a hardware reset fails then you definitely have a hardware problem. At this point it's time to have run diagnostics on the device.
 
harlenmm77 said:
It wouldn't boot passed the apple logo
Click to expand...

My suggestion is process of elimination. After reading all your posts on here, if you're within your 14 day return period, then I would return the watch and purchase a new one. See if this issue is repaired by getting a new watch.
 
Relentless Power said:
My suggestion is process of elimination. After reading all your posts on here, if you're within your 14 day return period, then I would return the watch and purchase a new one. See if this issue is repaired by getting a new watch.
Click to expand...

Its the phone that won't boot past the Apple Logo with a hard reset. Its definitely a phone hardware/software problem.
 
I have never seen Apple watch show up in my iphone battery usage screen ( think it needs to be over 1% to show up ? )

Running beta iphone and beta watch - I have had apps do crazy things and drain battery on both devices but removing the apps did fix the problem

part could just be bluetooth downloading all Iphone apps that go to the watch ( I have auto update of apps to watch on )
 
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