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Terrible battery life

AOD enabled, noise off, LTE on.
Apple Watch 5 44mm Aluminium - 6.0.1
iPhone XS Max - 13.1.2
HRM running during exercise.
I didn't think this was unacceptable.
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lindakoy said:
I'm trying to get it in the same configuration on the infogram face, as shown on the previous poster's picture. I got Duffy to show as a selection after quitting the watch app, but when I select it, it shows up as blank.
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deeddawg said:
That's indicative of a stuck app. Reboot your watch.

... and yes the software launch for WatchOS6 has been bumpy.
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BillGates1969 said:
You won't lose any Activity streaks - they are stored in the cloud. As a sanity check turn off your watch and open the Activity app on the iPhone. If it is there (and all the historical data), that is proof that your streaks etc are in the cloud.

FWIW I am on a 363 day move streak and have set up my old AW4 as new when it went pair shaped and my AW5.
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yachtmac said:
My watch is fine when I don’t workout but I am experiencing huge drain when I workout as well. It drops about 1% per minute in an indoor workout while playing music stored on the watch. Yesterday going from 75% to 35% in 40 mins. As this is one of the major use cases for the watch for me it is really disappointing.
I am starting to think that it may be the cellular like when you are out running? as I don’t have my phone at the Gym and it has patchy cell reception so maybe it is draining the battery fast because of that. BTW my series 3 worked really well in this scenario.
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The Game 161 said:
Damn that doesn’t seem right...
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dead again when I woke up. charged it. Setup as a new watch.

Battery 95%, went for a run, streaming a podcast. After 8 mins. Dead. Apple say battery is fine after running diagnostics

going to ask John Lewis to replace it
 
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During the first days, yes, battery was draining fast. But now it’s all good. Put my Series 5 at 8 a.m. fully charged and battery is at 92% at the moment. (I’m in Europe in case you wonder about the time.)

By the way, always on display is activated as is noise detection, max brightness, etc...
 
This thread has concerned me somewhat!

Nevertheless, I picked up my 44mm aluminium GPS Series 5 yesterday and left it to charge overnight after updating to 6.0.1. I turned off background app refresh on a few rarely used watch apps, turned off raise to wake & noise but left AOD active. Brightness turned down to the lowest setting (still plenty bright enough) and sounds turned off. Watch was set up as a new device.

After a 1 hour walking workout on my way to work this morning, and about 7 hours on my wrist since taking it off charge, battery is down to 79% and I’m pretty happy with that.

I’ll probably restart phone and watch before Monday and try again then to see if that gets it any better. Monday should be a similar day to today in activity terms. Will see what my walk home this afternoon does to the battery as well. Hopefully it’ll still be somewhere around 50%.
 
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Day 3 update... this is likely not going to stay constant as it’s a small sample from the day.. I WISH it would.

Charged this morning to 100%. Switched back to AOD enabled and raise wrist to wake enabled. I am curious in the difference with RTW back on.

Off charger at 9AM
3:34 Standby
32 min Usage
94% Remaining.

That’s under 2% drain per hour. I have seen it drain slower on the ‘high’ side of battery % remaining. We will see.
 
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SbSS 5 LTE, all is on except Noise app
Standby 5:52
Usage 1:03
84% left
WatchOS 6.1b2 iOS 13.2b1
So far less than 3% per hour. Better than it was on 6.01.

I also can confirm that I get Siri Shortcuts on my watch.
 
imlynxy said:
SbSS 5 LTE, all is on except Noise app
Standby 5:52
Usage 1:03
84% left
WatchOS 6.1b2 iOS 13.2b1
So far less than 3% per hour. Better than it was on 6.01.

I also can confirm that I get Siri Shortcuts on my watch.
Click to expand...

Around what did you get per hour on 6.0.1?
 
ReardenMetal said:
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.
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UPDATE:

I decided to run a watch face test today to determine if Solar Dial is the culprit, or at least playing a role. I relied mostly on Infograph Analog and Solar Graph today. I did NOT use Solar Dial at all. And...*drum roll*...my battery is back to normal and easily made it through the day.
 
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ReardenMetal said:
UPDATE:

I decided to run a watch face test today to determine if Solar Dial is the culprit, or at least playing a role. I relied mostly on Infograph Analog and Solar Graph today. I did NOT use Solar Dial at all. And...*drum roll*...my battery is back to normal and easily made it through the day.
Click to expand...

Yeah solar dial gave me excessive battery drain as well for some reason.
 
Just a note to folks here - I posted this in another thread.

6.0.1 did not improve the life of my wife's AW5 GPS.

Took a Factory Reset to make her watch battery life = to my own.

Hers was using 30%+ a night and needing a charge mid day to keep from shutting off - that's with everything turned off (app updates, notifications, noise, etc...).

Once she did a factory reset and set up as new - she did 12 hours today with 80% left. Similar (if not better) than my own usage.
 
This is my third Apple Watch and first cellular version. I’ve never experienced such horrible battery life. I’ve had the watch a week and it’s not getting better. Today, I’m at 11% after 13.5 hours. My old non-cellular 4 is still at 70%.

I called Apple tonight most to check on my return window. They had me repair the watch. So far it doesn’t seem to be helping but I’m going to give it until Tuesday. Since I got a stainless steel model, I’d have to go back to aluminum if I return it.

not sure what I’ll do. I assume Apple will fix this eventually butI’ll probably have to decide about returning it before that.
 
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I don’t know how people are experiencing such horrible battery life. I’ve had mine on since 10am today and it is now 12:27am and I’m at 72%. I did shut offf the hearing study thing and it has greatly improved. Always on is still on but I have it set to tap to wake the screen to full.
 
I normally charge when I wake up and before I go to bed because I like to use sleep tracking. Yesterday, I thought I'd skip the evening charge.

AOD enabled, noise off, LTE on.
Apple Watch 5 44mm Aluminium - 6.0.1
iPhone XS Max - 13.1.2
HRM running during exercise.

I have no problem with this. If 6.1 improves it then it's even better.

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Cruz3LT said:
but I have it set to tap to wake the screen to full.
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That's the reason you're seeing such good life.
 
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Latest update for my aw5 no lte on 6.01

no background app refresh
No noise detection
No raise to wake
Theater mode when sleeping

39 hours 15 minutes standby
3 hours 23 minutes active

w/ 16% left.
Turning off raise to wake made a huge difference for me. Perhaps 50% more usage. I debated if I need it but how I use the watch (w AOD on) raise to wake is not something I really use. For protecting privacy, turning it off is actually the most secure choice.

still going to go back and turn background app refresh on, only thing I have off I want back. But the battery time is doing well currently. I went from around 13 hours to 25 hours to 39 hours.
 
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Cfhumble said:
This is my third Apple Watch and first cellular version. I’ve never experienced such horrible battery life. I’ve had the watch a week and it’s not getting better. Today, I’m at 11% after 13.5 hours. My old non-cellular 4 is still at 70%.

I called Apple tonight most to check on my return window. They had me repair the watch. So far it doesn’t seem to be helping but I’m going to give it until Tuesday. Since I got a stainless steel model, I’d have to go back to aluminum if I return it.

not sure what I’ll do. I assume Apple will fix this eventually butI’ll probably have to decide about returning it before that.
Click to expand...

I’m in the same situation, I have tried everything and my S4 that I am comparing my S5 to is almost doubling the S5’s battery life.
 
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sbti 44mm. aod on, wrist to wake off, cellular always on but mostly near my phone. busy work day yesterday, no gym and after 18 hours was at 56%.

day before, did just under an hour at the gym with cellular streaming from apple music and workout app running. At 18 hours was around 40%.

Battery seems to get better with every charge and thrilled that I can now do a solid workout and still have plenty of battery before hitting the pillow.

Also absolutely not babying the finish and so far, not a single scuff I can see.
 
Today with AOD & raise to wake I was on track for about 24 hours. going back to turning off raise to wake. was curious.
 
My results today:

iPhone XR iOS 13.1.2 / Apple Watch Series 5 44mm Silver Aluminum (GPS) watchOS 6.0.1

On the watch the only features disabled were: Handoff and Siri (“Hey Siri”)

No workouts. 1 hour swimming would represent 8-10% loss lately.

I think results are “improving”. Anxiously waiting for watchOS 6.1...

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