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Terrible battery life
- Thread starter Cold_Beaver
- Start date
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Nice. I did a 48 minute workout today and battery went for 81% to 61%.
Several variables come into play, so YMMV. GPS on or off? Phone nearby or left behind? Cellular on or off? Streaming music over cellular or playing music directly from the watch storage or not playing anything at all? Those will all have an effect.
Mine has certainly been bad today 19.10 and only 22% left without any workout.
Bring on 6.1
55% to 44% in two hours since installing the 6.0.1 update to my S5 and the iOS update to my phone.
I'd been seeing about 3% per hour earlier in the day today.
We shall see.
Based on my S4 / WatchOS5 as a baseline I should end the day at 40-45% battery less any workouts (typically 20% for a weekday for me), meaning I can do a typical day with a workout and not worry about battery life. S5 needs to achieve approximately the same if I'm going to keep it.
Give that OS a day to settle IMO. For me, unless 5 can beat 48 hours I am likely staying with the 4. Don’t see anything to pull me away for less battery life.
Of course, new iOS and new WatchOS, so likely needs time to settle. I'm not fussed over it. Just a matter of deciding whether or not to return my S5 on Thursday when I'm driving by an Apple Store.
I don't need 48 hour life (and I think that's pretty ambitious) - I just need it to manage a typical day between coming off the charger at wakeup and going back on the charger at bedtime, plus some leeway in case of going out or something.
it's not about being clumsy. a good friend of mine was hit on his bike by a driver and fall detection could have alerted emergency services.
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I was prepared to make a careful battery life assessment today, but when 6.01 was released I grabbed my watch charger so I could install it (weird that watchOS can download OS updates but still require the charger to install them, but whatever).
Anyway, so my stats are all messed up now, but did it hoping there was a stealth battery fix in there. We’ll see tomorrow.
Anyway, so my stats are all messed up now, but did it hoping there was a stealth battery fix in there. We’ll see tomorrow.
My day 2 with Apple Watch series 5. Modular face with Fidelity (which hasn’t worked), Stocks, Activity, and Weather. 100% when I put on around 6:30am, 80% by 10:00am, totally dead about 5:45pm now. I will plug in when I get home but this isn’t good. I turned off background app refresh about halfway through the day, not sure if that did anything but I didn’t even know that was an option until now.
I have a S5 44MM and this is my first watch. I have noticed the battery doesn’t make it to the night. It goes down 5% just taking off charger for 20 min. Since this is my first one I didn’t know if this was normal to not make it all day with 2 hour workouts in. Now I know this is not normal. I am hoping watchOS6.1 will help us all out. Cause I didn’t spend this amount of money on something I have to worry about by end of day. Apple said turning off always on will Hardly help it so hoping it’s watch OS thing. iOS 13 was a mess so makes since this would be too.
I’m seeing 11% per two hours since the update.
Had been about 3%/hr before.
Perhaps it’ll settle in overnight andtomorrow’s numbers will be better.
I returned my watch and switched to my S4. Battery life is terrible still, so definitely a software thing.
Yep. My S4 is still on WatchOS 5 so if I do switch back I’ll be waiting a while before updating. 😎
Turned off quite a few things - to mirror what I had on my AW 3.... (Notifications, etc...). Today I left AOD off and raise to wake on just to set a standard.
Took my watch off charger at 5:30am. It is 6:00pm and I'm at 75%. Absolutely astounded. Was a pretty busy work day - I burned through my move goal (usually requires a 30 min run after work).
The only thing I changed from last week to today was turning off quite a few notifications. My wife's 40mm went to 0% by 3:00pm with similar settings - though she has notifications/background updating on for everything.
This is as good as my AW3 right now... but today is only 1 day, I'm going to leave everything the same and see if I get same results tomorrow.
Oh wow... AW and iOS update. Guess I'll leave settings the same, update, reboot, and wait a few more days.
Anyway, I definitely think it is a background updating app or notification that is causing this excessive drain. Imo.
Took my watch off charger at 5:30am. It is 6:00pm and I'm at 75%. Absolutely astounded. Was a pretty busy work day - I burned through my move goal (usually requires a 30 min run after work).
The only thing I changed from last week to today was turning off quite a few notifications. My wife's 40mm went to 0% by 3:00pm with similar settings - though she has notifications/background updating on for everything.
This is as good as my AW3 right now... but today is only 1 day, I'm going to leave everything the same and see if I get same results tomorrow.
Oh wow... AW and iOS update. Guess I'll leave settings the same, update, reboot, and wait a few more days.
Anyway, I definitely think it is a background updating app or notification that is causing this excessive drain. Imo.
I could very well be wrong here but, I have a feeling that the common denominator is the cellular version, even if cellular service hasn’t been turned on for all involved.
44mm S5 Cellular here active with T-Mobile. I don't know what has changed. Maybe the iOS and watchOS updates. Maybe I'm not fiddling with it as much. I'm sitting here at 9:30 after a normal work day and have 52%.
At this point if this is the new normal I will be content. This is enough for a full day of heavy usage from me.
At this point if this is the new normal I will be content. This is enough for a full day of heavy usage from me.