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Replace Ultra 1 or get Ultra 3?

W

weeesss

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 24, 2017
358
195
Last few months I am having to charge twice a day. My battery shows 89% but I went from 93% at 5:45am to 57% just under 7 hours later. That is only with tracking a 50 minute walk and nothing else.

I usually record 2 half-hour walks a day as well as running 30 minutes every other day listening to music and tracking my run.

I do remember when I got the U1 when they first came out and I was getting 2 to nearly 3 days before charging.

Any thoughts?
 
weeesss said:
Last few months I am having to charge twice a day. My battery shows 89% but I went from 93% at 5:45am to 57% just under 7 hours later. That is only with tracking a 50 minute walk and nothing else.

I usually record 2 half-hour walks a day as well as running 30 minutes every other day listening to music and tracking my run.

I do remember when I got the U1 when they first came out and I was getting 2 to nearly 3 days before charging.

Any thoughts?
Click to expand...
What watchOS are you on? Do you use cellular? Do you have 3rd party apps that refresh in the background?
There are many reasons why battery life could be impacted ...

When I upgraded my U1 to U2 I certainly noticed performance and battery life improvements, so U3 will be similar if you decide to go that way.
Keep in mind, assuming you're in the US that blood oxygen functionality will be different on the U3, it will only be displayed on phone and also no longer show in the vitals app.
And check in trade-in value for your U1, if you feel that the U3 is worth it to you, by all means...

Also, not sure what you mean in your title "replace U1...", if you're referring to battery replacement, Apple won't do that unless battery health is 79% or lower
 
I am on latest OS 26.02 and only use cellular while running. I meant replace battery or upgrade to the 3. If they won’t replace the battery at the health level is now, I will probably have to upgrade. I am in the US and don’t really care about the blood oxygen. $255 is the trade in value.
 
weeesss said:
I am on latest OS 26.02 and only use cellular while running. I meant replace battery or upgrade to the 3. If they won’t replace the battery at the health level is now, I will probably have to upgrade. I am in the US and don’t really care about the blood oxygen. $255 is the trade in value.
Click to expand...
Well, it sounds like you're talking yourself into upgrading. Now the big question is: black or natural :cool:

Remember when you trade in with Apple you'll get to keep your old band and charging puck.
 
I was planning to upgrade from my launch day AWU1 anyway, but I was in the same boat as you. I would charge to 100% right before bed, sleep (7ish hours), wake (4:30-5), workout, and go until 9pm, very typically ending in the 20-30% range.

Did the same with my AWU3 last night/today and I'm currently at 71% (3:15pm), so that's a big improvement. Not convinced I could go a full two days, though, so it's still once a day charging for me.
 
I traded my UW1 for an UW3

The ultra 1 battery life drastically changed from launch date battery life in only a couple months. It also never really got low power mode. There was a software update that killed battery life on top of just general batter degradation.

I got 3 days of battery on the UW1 on launch day and for about a month then it started to go down. That's with cellular, fitness use, and no notifications. I still could always make it 1 day easily with heavy use though.

UW3 is way better but I don't know how long it will last.
 
Try unpairing and re-pairing your watch.

I've had a couple times where the battery would drain unusually fast (run time dropped to 1/4 to 1/2 of what it was before ) and the re-pair would sort it out. usually happened after an OS update, guess some setting got confused.

give it a day or two to settle in after doing this before passing final judgement

I had to do this when I took my series 9 to the gold master public beta
 
My Ultra was at 88% health, and after fully charging and sleep tracking I would wake up with the battery at 88%-ish, and after my typical morning workout routine my watch would be at 55%-ish. I charged when I showered and right before bed, and I could get through the day, but I had to keep a battery complication so I could check just to make sure, and even tried turning off AOD to see if that would help battery last longer each day. (It did, but, boy, did I hate it, and switched back after a day.)

I did the upgrade to the Ultra 3, and battery performance in the last 12 days has been typically 97%-ish after sleep tracking and 82%-ish after my average morning workout. So, that's much better.

That said, I'm second-guessing my decision to upgrade now, and now wonder if I should have waited six months, so I could do another watch upgrade in autumn 2029 (so, every 3.5 years). So now my plan is to do that with the Ultra 3 - upgrade in spring 2029 rather than in three years, in autumn 2028, and hope to space out the upgrade just that little bit more.
 
I traded my Ultra 1 natural titanium for the AWU 3 black with the Milanese loop. My battery was at 86%, so it probably still had a good year left before it dipped below 80%. Trade in was $255 for the Ultra 1, so I decided to move ahead. Happy with the upgrade overall.
 
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