Used to get great daily battery life on S4. After os6 upgrade it’s been draining at a 6-7%/hour rate. This never happened before the upgrade. Apple took back my watch and sent it out for a free battery replacement. Watch is a year old. Genius Bar ran diagnostics on watch and claimed it was all good but they will change the battery anyway. Never saw this background app refresh option on the watch before. I wonder if this is the cause of the drain.
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Terrible battery life
- Thread starter Cold_Beaver
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I honestly don't think it's the cause, as my S3 with watchOS 6 lasts as long as it did before. Still in the 3-4%/hr region, whereas my S5 is about 13%/hr.
Do you have wake on lift raise on?6.1 is amazing. On my S5 44mm cellular, AOD on, noise off, app background refresh on, read a few emails and texts and I'm at 91% left 😁
44min usage
6hrs 10min standby
Come on Apple release 6.1 quickly
Background app refresh has been there for at least a couple prior WatchOS versions.
It's there on my AW4 with WatchOS5.
I do, and the brightness is set to two bars lit, so about 75%.
tl;dr version - My AW5 _almost_ lasted through a typical day but not quite...
So yesterday was a fairly typical usage day for me. I follow this pattern 3-4 days a week:
Wake @ 5:45am. Phone usually with me, sometimes leave it at my desk when grabbing coffee or something. 45 minute outdoor run streaming a podcast to headphones, so GPS+cell+BT all on. Typical interactions with the watch setting reminders via siri, checking meetings, acknowledging texts, etc. I did go to bed a little later at 11:20 rather than the more usual 11pm.
AW5 hit low power warning at 9:38pm. Watch at 5% power at 10:53pm showing Usage of 4h 44m, Standby 15h 42min. At 11:20pm I noticed the watch had completely shut down and was unresponsive.
My S4 and previous watches all handled the above without a thought, put on the charger at bedtime, take it off when I get up. I've never needed to worry about the battery unless I'd gone for a 2 hour long run or something where I knew I'd used cell+GPS a lot.
For the curious - AOD on, noise app off, otherwise a normal setup with background app refresh on for most stuff.
So yesterday was a fairly typical usage day for me. I follow this pattern 3-4 days a week:
Wake @ 5:45am. Phone usually with me, sometimes leave it at my desk when grabbing coffee or something. 45 minute outdoor run streaming a podcast to headphones, so GPS+cell+BT all on. Typical interactions with the watch setting reminders via siri, checking meetings, acknowledging texts, etc. I did go to bed a little later at 11:20 rather than the more usual 11pm.
AW5 hit low power warning at 9:38pm. Watch at 5% power at 10:53pm showing Usage of 4h 44m, Standby 15h 42min. At 11:20pm I noticed the watch had completely shut down and was unresponsive.
My S4 and previous watches all handled the above without a thought, put on the charger at bedtime, take it off when I get up. I've never needed to worry about the battery unless I'd gone for a 2 hour long run or something where I knew I'd used cell+GPS a lot.
For the curious - AOD on, noise app off, otherwise a normal setup with background app refresh on for most stuff.
I noticed the podcast app showed — under storage usage despite my settings to sync a few podcasts. Can anyone else report what the podcast App usage is reporting for you?
Also, watchOS is supposed to be smart and use background app refresh, etc. as needed. We shouldn’t have to turn things off to get the battery life claimed. We have the features to use them. You could turn the watch off and your battery would last a month.
Also, watchOS is supposed to be smart and use background app refresh, etc. as needed. We shouldn’t have to turn things off to get the battery life claimed. We have the features to use them. You could turn the watch off and your battery would last a month.
Come on Apple release 6.1 quickly
Hopefully -- else I suspect Apple will have a surplus of returns by this time next week.
As it stands, my AW5 doesn't handle a "typical day" without hitting the low power warning.
I updated to 6.1. When I took my watch off the charger (6:30 am), it was only at 97% (weird), no workout and it is down to 88%. I have AOD on, background and noise off, raise to wake on. I am not sure if there is any improvement yet, but I will report back.
So thats 18 hours give or take 30 mins which is what Apple are saying you will achieve with the watch.
I wrote this in another thread 2½ hours ago.
In that time, I've lost only another 5% - I'm at 28%. The new and colourful faces are tempting and fancy, but man do they appear to destroy the battery in ways I don't remember in OS5.
In that time, I've lost only another 5% - I'm at 28%. The new and colourful faces are tempting and fancy, but man do they appear to destroy the battery in ways I don't remember in OS5.
I have talked to apple support yesterday.
They said my watch is fine, it matches the 18h promise ...
When I have told them it was a lot better with S2/S3/S4, they gave me links to webpages to "optimize" the battery: disable all ...
They told me to wait for watchOS 6.1 without giving an ETA.
I am affraid they will have a lot of watches for refurb
They said my watch is fine, it matches the 18h promise ...
When I have told them it was a lot better with S2/S3/S4, they gave me links to webpages to "optimize" the battery: disable all ...
They told me to wait for watchOS 6.1 without giving an ETA.
I am affraid they will have a lot of watches for refurb
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Just under 16 hours to the low power warning @ 10% battery in mid-evening. It would be foolish to depend on the watch in any way beyond that level.
So no. That doesn't meet spec.
Regardless of whether it does or does not technically meet spec, the key fact is that the performance is substantially below what I've had on my AW4. For the AW5 to be a a viable upgrade for me, it must at least achieve the previous performance level. Others may be willing to accept reduced battery performance, but I am not.
My expectation of Apple with the AOD screen is they achieved power efficiencies that counterbalanced that added battery draw form the AOD -- and if the reality is otherwise, then AOD isn't worth the trade-off to me and I will wait for a future generation. Much as I like the compass and added storage, those two alone are not worth the cost to upgrade.
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I just look at it as an early preview to S6. AOD and compass. I can probably count on chip performance taking a leap because Apple won’t let that stay the same for another year. With chip increase comes better features.
Also we see battery issues now. Apple does too. I’m sure they’ll address it somehow. I do think they’ll do a redesign and require new bands making old ones incompatible.
These are the reasons I returned S5 and will be content with s3 til next year. To be honest even if S5 had no issues I don’t see much compelling to upgrade from s3 right now.
True story. I’ve never called Apple support. Anyways I wouldn’t expect a lowly paid employee to have any insight.
While I do love the bigger display, EKG and the much slimmer optical appearance of the S5 over the S3 (even though it's only marginally thinner physically), I am about to return it and stay another year with my S3 - mainly because despite all efforts (reset, repair, set up as new, iOS 13.1) I can't for the life of me get the S5 to last a normal day for me. I never managed to get it below 10%/hr battery consumption, and I'm simply not willing to accept that. Unless somehow a miracle happens over the course of the weekend, it's going back on monday. I might reorder once the battery issues are ironed out, or just wait and see what S6 brings.
6.1 is amazing. On my S5 44mm cellular, AOD on, noise off, app background refresh on, read a few emails and texts and I'm at 91% left 😁
44min usage
6hrs 10min standby
Come on Apple release 6.1 quickly
It won't be any time soon. The watch betas go through several versions before they are typically released. I wouldn't expect a final version of this software until late October/early November at the earliest.
Ive been upgrading every year since series 2 (when apple fixed the water issue) I’ve got a series 4 44mm SS and a series 5 44mm SS. The series 5 is getting sent back today (actually sending 3 series 5 back). I knew this wasn’t a huge upgrade year but was willing to upgrade just for the display.
The battery life isn’t terrible for me but it is clearly worse than my series 4. The always on display is great but I’ll be waiting until next year.
Below are some battery percentages I took at different times of the day along with screen shots of usage. The first screen shot is the series 4 and 2nd is the series 5.
Both watches were set up the same, latest watch OS, etc. Both had the noise app always listening, raise to wake on, background apps refresh on. Only difference series 5 of course had always on display turned on.
Series 4
7:55am removed from charger
11:15am 94%
11:46am 91%
7:05pm 69%
10:43pm 55%
11:55pm 53% removed from wrist
7:56am 46%
Series 5
8:00am removed from charger
11:01am 93%
12:50pm 85%
6:53pm 58%
10:21pm 40%
1:02am 31% removed from wrist
7:56am 23%
The battery life isn’t terrible for me but it is clearly worse than my series 4. The always on display is great but I’ll be waiting until next year.
Below are some battery percentages I took at different times of the day along with screen shots of usage. The first screen shot is the series 4 and 2nd is the series 5.
Both watches were set up the same, latest watch OS, etc. Both had the noise app always listening, raise to wake on, background apps refresh on. Only difference series 5 of course had always on display turned on.
Series 4
7:55am removed from charger
11:15am 94%
11:46am 91%
7:05pm 69%
10:43pm 55%
11:55pm 53% removed from wrist
7:56am 46%
Series 5
8:00am removed from charger
11:01am 93%
12:50pm 85%
6:53pm 58%
10:21pm 40%
1:02am 31% removed from wrist
7:56am 23%
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Yes - though Apple has released quick updates in the past to fix a problem.
Such as today last year when WatchOS 5.0.1 came out ten days after 5.0...
Edit - and WatchOS 4.0.1 released on Oct 4 2017, two weeks after 4.0
Yes - though Apple has released quick updates in the past to fix a problem.
Such as today last year when WatchOS 5.0.1 came out ten days after 5.0...
True. The question is, does Apple see this as a problem? Until they acknowledge it, the problem doesn’t exist (in their world) lol.
If they acknowledge it, at least prior to releasing a fix, they'll have thirty class-action lawsuits filed by slimeball lawyers within ten minutes. (yes, many lawyers are not slimeballs)
I am not sure about that. Bad battery life is pretty terrible for a brand new product. Apple may focus simply on that and get 6.1 out the door quicker.