Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Series 1 or Series 2 real world battery life?

My wife is having issues with her 38mm S1. But seeing so many people getting good life out of the S1 we might take it in and see if we can exchange it, might just have a bum battery.

I had her remove all 3rd party apps and restart it (we tried setting it up as new yesterday) will see if there is any improvements, if not will def be taking it in. If there is improvement I'll just have to add a few apps at a time and see which one is doing it.
 
Just wanted to update, since I was here complaining earlier, that the last couple of days have been far better in terms of battery (please don't jinx anything!) Can't say I'm using it significantly less, but definitely fiddling with it a bit less. Easily made it through the day yesterday and still over 80% about a third of the way through today.
 
Updated in another thread but I'll update here. Switched to 38mm original generation and my battery life is exactly as it used to be. After 4 hours it is at 96%. Running OS3 restored from the same settings of my Series1, which was at 75% after 4 hours yesterday.

Barely touched the Watch both days. 75% would've been acceptable if I'd been doing workouts or using apps, but not just sitting idle with barely any notifications coming in.
 
Is there still "Power Reserve" on the new OS or the Series 2 Apple Watch?

Oops! I just answered my own question. When the battery went down to 10% I got a warning with the Power Reserve option.
 
Last edited:
So far battery life hasn't been too great on my Apple Watch Series 2 38mm.

I'm at 37% with 9 1/2 hours. Didn't play around with it much, and left the wrist motion detection off. Anything I can disable for better battery life?

It's only my first full day with it, so hopefully it gets better.
[doublepost=1474663954][/doublepost]Does disabling Backgroud app refresh mess with an notifications?
 
LIVEFRMNYC said:
So far battery life hasn't been too great on my Apple Watch Series 2 38mm.

I'm at 37% with 9 1/2 hours. Didn't play around with it much, and left the wrist motion detection off. Anything I can disable for better battery life?

It's only my first full day with it, so hopefully it gets better.
[doublepost=1474663954][/doublepost]Does disabling Backgroud app refresh mess with an notifications?
Click to expand...

Disable background app refresh on things you don't need, or all together. Remove things from the dock. The dock is what does your battery in.
Notifications should be unaffected as those are mirrored from your phone usually.
[doublepost=1474666268][/doublepost]9.5 hours with normal use and I am at 84%.
It's the dock.
 
  • Like
Reactions: LIVEFRMNYC
Aml216 said:
Disable background app refresh on things you don't need, or all together. Remove things from the dock. The dock is what does your battery in.
Notifications should be unaffected as those are mirrored from your phone usually.
[doublepost=1474666268][/doublepost]9.5 hours with normal use and I am at 84%.
It's the dock.
Click to expand...

So basically the dock keeps apps active?
 
I'm currently getting about 2 days battery life with my s1. The first 2 or 3 days however was more like 18 hrs. The only things I did was restart the watch and shut off the heart rate sensor for a day. Immediately my battery life improved. I now have the heart rate sensor back on and continue to go a full 24 hrs with 50%. Full haptics, medium brightness, background app refresh on for only a few apps.
 
So I have a friend that works for apple and we ran a diagnostics on it. They are able to see percentage of battery use for each thing. My wifes was the email, it was using 9% of the battery every hour! She has some special profile thing for her work email not sure if thats it or not. Will try turning that off and see.

So i'd say if you want to know whats using the power, contact apple or go to a store. We were able to start the diagnostics in the iphones settings area.
 
S2 42mm SG

I’m 4 full days in and I’ve had very consistent results.

My usage pattern: start the day at 7AM (100%), use the GPS for a 40 minute workout in the morning and a 35 minute walk at lunch. Take the watch off around 10PM to charge. Each of the last 4 days the S2 has been between 59-64% when I put it on the charger.

Curiously, two nights this week I’ve let the watch charge to 100% and put it back on before bed. Both times I’ve woken up at 6:30AM to find the battery down to 75%. It seems strange that over the course of 15 hours (including over an hour of GPS), the watch lost between 36% and 41% (~2.4-2.7% per hour) and yet over 8 hours of practically zero usage, the watch lost 25% each night (~3.1%).

At this point, coming from a S0, I’m thrilled with the S2 battery life. In the few months I owned the original Apple Watch I’d rarely finish a day with more than 20% battery life.
 
Aml216 said:
Disable background app refresh on things you don't need, or all together. Remove things from the dock. The dock is what does your battery in.
Notifications should be unaffected as those are mirrored from your phone usually.
[doublepost=1474666268][/doublepost]9.5 hours with normal use and I am at 84%.
It's the dock.
Click to expand...

I agree. I've tried so much and the dock seems to be the troublemaker. Especially throwing out iMessage made a huge difference.

However, I noticed another strange thing. I turned off some mirrored notifications and now I don't get these on my phone either.
Anyone the same problem?
 
I have a Series 1 aluminum and a Series 2 SS. I had a Series 0 SS. I haven't timed anything or changed any settings, but subjectively I'm impressed with how good the battery life is on my Series 2 compared to my old watch (Series 0). Both Series 2 and Series 0 seem to have better battery life than my Series 1. Maybe the faster processor on the Series 1 runs the battery down faster. Interestingly my fave is the Series 1 with the smaller case and lighter weight. I hardly even notice it is on my wrist and with the faster processor and new iOS it really seems like a great upgrade.
 
infinitejest said:
I agree. I've tried so much and the dock seems to be the troublemaker. Especially throwing out iMessage made a huge difference.

However, I noticed another strange thing. I turned off some mirrored notifications and now I don't get these on my phone either.
Anyone the same problem?
Click to expand...

I found iMessage to be a battery hog as well.
No problems with mirrored notifications for me.
 
Question: I removed all items from my dock. When I check, there are few things in there that are probably recents. I can close a couple but not all by swiping up. Photos is open but I can't seem to close it. Also iTunes which I have never used. I find when I am changing bands, I hit all kinds of things I don't want to. Practice, I guess. My question is, why won't those two apps close from the dock? I am restarting now to see if I can get rid of them. I have had to turn off a ton of stuff or my watch was running out before bedtime. I have a 38mm S1.
 
I love the battery life. Received it UPS at 10am yesterday morning with 99% charge. Set it up …been messing with it…even had a 30 min run today……it's 549 pm Sunday and I still have 46% left. Amazing. Hasn't been on the charger since I received it either.
 
Well we now have 2 Apple watches in the house an S1 and S2.

Battery life for both has been nearly identical with very similar usage. My wife only got hers at the weekend (S1) and when we have checked the end of day battery is within a few % of each other.

As an example I got mine off its charger this morning at 7am and its nearly 3pm and I'm at 83%. We both have ended up most days finishing at 50% or higher and I suspect as we play with it less showing people and setting things up that will most likely improve.

More than happy with both in terms of battery life; maybe the screen brightness offsets the larger battery and the GPS being used from time to time over the S1's smaller battery I suspect. Either way we are happy.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Hevelius
There is no rhyme or reason to how the watch uses battery. First couple of days saw battery draining fast. After that things stabilized and I got good battery life - 40-50% remaining at the end of the day. Last couple of days are back to crap, with fast draining at times even when I'm not actively interacting with the watch.

All of this despite the fact that I took a bunch of apps out of my dock, and even went so far as to uninstall them. I figure what's the point of having a device I'm afraid to use.
 
stewie1 said:
There is no rhyme or reason to how the watch uses battery. First couple of days saw battery draining fast. After that things stabilized and I got good battery life - 40-50% remaining at the end of the day. Last couple of days are back to crap, with fast draining at times even when I'm not actively interacting with the watch.

All of this despite the fact that I took a bunch of apps out of my dock, and even went so far as to uninstall them. I figure what's the point of having a device I'm afraid to use.
Click to expand...

I have the same problem and I think it is software related. The guys from 9to5Mac even mentioned it on their last podcast.
I hope watchOS 3.1 will fix it.
 
infinitejest said:
I have the same problem and I think it is software related. The guys from 9to5Mac even mentioned it on their last podcast.
I hope watchOS 3.1 will fix it.
Click to expand...

Me too. I just got my first Apple Watch (Series 1, 42mm) and the battery drained like crazy, out of the box, with no apps installed. I'm guessing some of the built-in apps (like Mail, Messages) or a complication isn't working correctly for me, and therefore consumes a lot more CPU that what it's supposed to.

Inspired by this thread, I tried removing all complications and apps from the Dock. So far I'm at >50% after 24 hours, and even created a Reddit thread and a online spreadsheet about it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/54eqd8/all_my_series_1_battery_observations_continuous/
https://www.icloud.com/numbers/0UoMAnaTa88jKIVO-4-sFBlUA#Apple_Watch_battery
 
berggren.anders said:
I'm guessing some of the built-in apps (like Mail, Messages) or a complication isn't working correctly for me, and therefore consumes a lot more CPU that what it's supposed to.
Click to expand...

I think so too. I gotta be either faulty complications or/and faulty dock apps.
I've lost 50% of my battery in only 4 hours. Then I removed all dock apps and switched from a watch face with 4 complications on it (music, weather, activity rings, date) to the numbers watch face (no complications on it), and then, all of the sudden, I only lost 30% in 11 hours (!) while doing the same kind of things with my watch as before (reading notifications, replying to some messages).
 
infinitejest said:
I think so too. I gotta be either faulty complications or/and faulty dock apps.
I've lost 50% of my battery in only 4 hours. Then I removed all dock apps and switched from a watch face with 4 complications on it (music, weather, activity rings, date) to the numbers watch face (no complications on it), and then, all of the sudden, I only lost 30% in 11 hours (!) while doing the same kind of things with my watch as before (reading notifications, replying to some messages).
Click to expand...

probably will be fixed in an upcoming watchOS 3.x release. we have seen battery performance issue fixes in other releases before watchOS 2.0.1 for an example.
 
  • Like
Reactions: infinitejest
Aml216 said:
Disable background app refresh on things you don't need, or all together. Remove things from the dock. The dock is what does your battery in.
Notifications should be unaffected as those are mirrored from your phone usually.
[doublepost=1474666268][/doublepost]9.5 hours with normal use and I am at 84%.
It's the dock.
Click to expand...

Aml216 said:
I believe the dock keeps these dock apps running the background/memory. Either way it's got to take battery to do.
Click to expand...

Thanks, You was right, it was defiantly the dock. I'm 13 hours in and 79% battery life. :D:D:D

Still have all my apps enabled for background refresh. Just took every app off the dock.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back