Series 4 Battery Life Terrible After 13.5.1 Update?

[JTitleist12]

I have a Series 4 AW that was already running on most recently updated 6.2.6 OS and the battery life was awesome...I could go an entire day with multiple workouts, round of golf using a GPS app and just general use and be in the mid to upper 70% range left at like 8-9 pm each night.

Last Friday I updated my iPhone XS Max to most recent 13.5.1 and ever since, my watch battery has been absolutely terrible. I am bleeding battery pretty much as soon as I take it off the charger each morning and by 10-11am I am already down into the 70% range.

I contacted Apple Support and they performed a remote diagnostic on the watch battery and it came back fine. I have tried forced restarting both the phone and watch multiple times which hasn't helped at all. I do not want to wipe the devices or unpair and reset the watch.

What gives?

Thanks.

 

[boswald]

Just a guess, but have you tried disabling background refresh for apps you don’t use much?

 

[JTitleist12]

Just a guess, but have you tried disabling background refresh for apps you don’t use much?

I have not tried that...is that supposed to help battery life? If so, I have never messed with it before and my battery was always fine so I am wondering why I would need to change that now after an update?

Thanks.

 

[boswald]

Definitely worth a try! I’ve done it on my iPhone and noticed a difference. Haven’t tried the watch yet since I don’t use a lot of apps.

 

[JTitleist12]

I went through and disabled the background refresh on a large number of unused apps and it seemed to hold @ 100% longer than normal after removing from charger, but now it is back to dropping 4-6% per hour while not using it for more than telling time.

Very frustrating as I feel the watch was operating perfect last week before the update.

 

[TiggrToo]

I went through and disabled the background refresh on a large number of unused apps and it seemed to hold @ 100% longer than normal after removing from charger, but now it is back to dropping 4-6% per hour while not using it for more than telling time.

Very frustrating as I feel the watch was operating perfect last week before the update.

If a reboot doesn't fix it then try unpairing the Watch and then re-pair it without restoring.

That fixed my weird Series 3 draining issues 2 years back and it's been fine ever since (touch wood).

 

[JTitleist12]

If a reboot doesn't fix it then try unpairing the Watch and then re-pair it without restoring.

That fixed my weird Series 3 draining issues 2 years back and it's been fine ever since (touch wood).

I don’t want to have to unpair and erase the watch to fix this issue...looks like I’ll have to wait for the next update and hope it fixes the problem.

 

[TiggrToo]

I don’t want to have to unpair and erase the watch to fix this issue...looks like I’ll have to wait for the next update and hope it fixes the problem.

That may not help. From everything I could tell the problem was a stray app that went haywire and started eating cycles.

I get you on not wanting to do this, I'm the same way, but eventually I bit the bullet and am so glad I did.

The big advantage to the Watch is very little real data is kept on it and apps can be reinstalled easily enough.

 

[jdb8167]

One thing I always turn off is Share iPhone & Watch Analytics under Privacy->Analytics & Improvements. Having it off seems to improve watch battery life. I started doing this for version 6 of watchOS from advice I read somewhere. Since that analytics function isn’t critical to my use of the watch, turning it off is consequence free. Not sure it ever had a real effect but my watch battery life steadily improved since disabling it.

 

[kitenski]

I’m getting noticeably worse battery life on my aw5 in the recent weeks as well.

 

[robertomp]

Same here with a 4. Until a few weeks ago the battery would last at least two days without workouts, but now barely lasts a day....