I have a 44mm S4 Nike LTE AW. I’m running iOS 13.1.2 and WatchOS 6.0.1 currently. Have been experiencing worse battery life like a lot of you out there, even before the smaller dot releases of 13 and 6. Regular 13 and 6 weren’t great either. Trouble getting through the day, whereas on WatchOS 5, with regular workouts/music/podcasts/etc. I’d easily hit the hay at about 50% battery. Now, maybe somewhere in the 20s or worse. And, I don’t charge my battery overnight because I believe that degrades the battery over the long term. Rather, I charge as I’m getting ready in the morning and my watch chills on the nightstand away from the charger.
My theory/observation:
- This software handles cellular streaming/Bluetooth comms differently in some way. When I’m out doing my normal walks in the neighborhood running errands and playing locally stored music or streaming a podcast over LTE, I notice a far faster battery drain than WatchOS 5 exhibited. Twice as fast.
- I am mostly using the new Solar Dial face, which is by far one of Apple’s best, but I suspect the color usage and anything else going on programmatically with that face is expensive for the battery.
- I am using using the Noise alerts in the background, but not as a live complication. That seemed very energy expensive to use on a watch face. I don’t think it’s the noise alerts, but who knows?
- Perhaps there’s something going on with location based services? A perennial suspect.
That’s all I‘ve got. I have not tried unpairing and re-pairing yet, as that’s a chore. And then there’s the fun question of restoring from the backup or TRULY going all the way by rebuilding my watch from scratch.