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High Apple Watch S4 GPS battery drain on IOS 13 PB

samevansinworthi

samevansinworthi

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 15, 2018
50
18
Good afternoon all,
This is my first post, so be gentle!
Has anyone experienced high battery usage on an Apple Watch on watchOS 5.2.1 but running iOS 13 PB? I only noticed it today, no change to normal routine and I usually have 60% at the end of the working day. Today, I am at 23% at the same point!

I have been a beta tester for a few years, but I haven’t seen this behaviour before. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thank you in advance.
 
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I’m in the same boat as well. Debating if I should roll back to iOS 12 or take the risk of running the beta on the watch.
 
got the Dev beta on iPhone X and AW S4 and just the day after upgrading my battery was draining hardcore, then it was back to normal. First night I went to bed with 100% and woke up with 23%. Second night I had 83% left.
 
BlankStar said:
got the Dev beta on iPhone X and AW S4 and just the day after upgrading my battery was draining hardcore, then it was back to normal. First night I went to bed with 100% and woke up with 23%. Second night I had 83% left.
Click to expand...

This!
 
It's because even when the install is "finished" it actually isn't. The OS still needs to fool around with files and stuff :)

Just upgraded my iPhone X to DevBeta 3 and expecting the battery to drain faster at least the rest of the day.
 
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I am having the same battery drain problems with my Watch 4 using watchOS 5.2.1 and iPhone XS Max on iOS 12.4 public beta 6.

Since 12.4 beta 3 I have seen the battery life reduced considerably. I have also noticed that second and subsequent workouts are very slow to reach the phone's workout and health apps.

Strangely the first recording of a new day transfers immediately. This coincides with morning use after a full overnight charge.

Is anyone experiencing watch battery drain that is not using with iOS or watchOS beta's?
 
I had been on iOS 12 and watchOS 5 since I bought my Apple devices, about a month ago.

The iPhone battery is impressive, I'm really happy with it. The Apple Watch battery was adequate.

However, about a week ago something started draining my AW battery: about 15% an hour.

I tried disabling everything. Uninstalled every app, disabled background syncing for everything... no luck.

Yesterday I decided to try iOS 13 and watchOS 6, but the same problem persisted.

Today I've unpaired and repaired the watch. I have installed no apps and I will give it a couple of days to settle and see if the problem is fixed.

But all this problem has me perplexed, I thought random battery leaks were just a WearOS thing (don't take me wrong, the AW is much, much better than any WearOS device out there. It's just the battery that has been an issue).
 
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The iOS connecting your watch with the phone is a beta. Expect wacky battery drain.... if you can’t deal with this, get off the beta and go back to iOS 12.
 
tgara said:
The iOS connecting your watch with the phone is a beta. Expect wacky battery drain.... if you can’t deal with this, get off the beta and go back to iOS 12.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the answer, but maybe I didn't explain the situation properly. The battery drain started while I was still on iOS 13, watchOS 5.

The upgrading to the beta versions was just trying to improve the situation (it didn't improve).

I still have a 10% an hour drain with no apps installed.
 

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reycat said:
Thanks for the answer, but maybe I didn't explain the situation properly. The battery drain started while I was still on iOS 13, watchOS 5.

The upgrading to the beta versions was just trying to improve the situation (it didn't improve).

I still have a 10% an hour drain with no apps installed.
Click to expand...

Ah, gotcha.

I can tell you my wife's watch had similar behavior after the last software updates (e.g, rapid battery drain). Some bit of software got corrupted during the download or install, I'm sure, because the high drain started right after that.

I tried restarting both the phone and watch, but nothing worked. Ends up I had to un-pair and re-pair the phone to the watch, but that fixed the problem. Battery consumption was back to normal after that.

If you do this, I suggest you NOT choose to restore the watch from a backup (the watch backs up automatically when you do an un-pairing) because you may be simply re-loading the same corrupt software files. Pair and set the watch up as "new" and start fresh.
 
Here we are again! New Public beta and my battery has dropped rapidly again. The only way I have found to sort this is to reset the watch and restore and it’s back to normal. Frustrating, I’ve sent feedback.
 
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Warning

You must update your watch to watchOS 6 beta 2 or later before updating to future versions of iOS 13 beta otherwise your watch will no longer be able to connect to your phone. (52854192)

Does this mean since I dont have io6 beta but I am running IOS 13 I have to go back to ios 12? Since I cant get IOs 6?
Thanks
Jeff
Z3roFlaw said:
Noticing worse watch battery life after updating to iOS 13 PB 4 today (Dev beta 5). Filed a report. I'm not running the beta on the watch, just series 4 with 5.3 OS version.
Click to expand...
 
I think this is only during the Beta stage and only if you are using the AW beta and the IPhone Beta. I’m using the PB and the latest release watchOS and it works fine. Apart from the above comments!
 
samevansinworthi said:
Good afternoon all,
This is my first post, so be gentle!
Has anyone experienced high battery usage on an Apple Watch on watchOS 5.2.1 but running iOS 13 PB? I only noticed it today, no change to normal routine and I usually have 60% at the end of the working day. Today, I am at 23% at the same point!

I have been a beta tester for a few years, but I haven’t seen this behaviour before. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thank you in advance.
Click to expand...

i can confirm, the battery life decreased drastically with watch os 5.3 and ios 13 beta 5
 
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My watch battery drained incredibly rapidly after installing the latest iOS 13 PB. Watch on 5.3 non-beta.
I only got 7 hours from it yesterday!!!
 
Yes. Mine won’t even make it through the day.
[doublepost=1564718374][/doublepost]
tgara said:
The iOS connecting your watch with the phone is a beta. Expect wacky battery drain.... if you can’t deal with this, get off the beta and go back to iOS 12.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the snark. He asked a question not for rude replies.
 
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Normally go to bed (late) with around 50% on a S4 running 5.3. Starting with iOS 13db5 I am getting the 10% warning around 8pm on the watch.
Hopefully the next beta will be better.
 
A`found the issue on my watch. I had 5 apps that were constantly loading even though they were ready installed. I uninstalled them and it seems much better.
 
Has anyone tried unpairing and re-pairing (with the backup)? I’m going to try that now. Nothing to lose if I re-pair with the backup.
 
rstark18 said:
Has anyone tried unpairing and re-pairing (with the backup)? I’m going to try that now. Nothing to lose if I re-pair with the backup.
Click to expand...
I did twice. Check the Apple Watch app for apps that are constantly loading.
 
Mansu944 said:
I did twice. Check the Apple Watch app for apps that are constantly loading.
Click to expand...

I checked when I saw you mention that yesterday. I don’t see any apps reloading in the iPhone app. I re-paired last night.

This morning when I went to put the watch on I noticed it loaded watch faces I’ve never used. I rebooted everything and the watch came back with the right faces but the iPhone app should no faces. I added a new face on my watch and that tricked the iPhone app to showing all my normally loaded faces.
 
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d102581134e0e8d862452a91a4ccde91.jpg


These are my screenshots of the usage. I was having the same problem. The top is iOS 13 latest developer beta and watch os5.2.1 the second is with the watch updated to latest watch is 6 beta.

Problem is solved and battery if behaving even better than before.
 
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