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Terrible battery life

So I am now getting 54% after 12 hours standby, 2.5 hours of active use including 30 minutes of cellular streaming music while going for a run. AOD and cellular on while RTW, noise and most other things turned off. Is this in line with others on their AW5? My return window is closing rapidly... I’m pretty much draining 3% per hour if not streaming over cellular. Have seen several stating 2% drain.
is this as good as it will get or could a replacement have better battery life?
 
nph said:
So I am now getting 54% after 12 hours standby, 2.5 hours of active use including 30 minutes of cellular streaming music while going for a run. AOD and cellular on while RTW, noise and most other things turned off. Is this in line with others on their AW5? My return window is closing rapidly... I’m pretty much draining 3% per hour if not streaming over cellular. Have seen several stating 2% drain.
is this as good as it will get or could a replacement have better battery life?
Click to expand...
Mine is around 2-2.5% per hour with AOD off and around 3-4% per hour with AOD on. No exercise and always close to the phone so it maintains the connection. Tried everything possible - multiple re-pairings, restartings, different watch faces, white magic, black magic, sacrificing goat on a full moon, sacrificing goat on a half moon - nothing helps. it sucks. I am hoping Series 6 has better battery life next year - much better than this horrible thing.
 
The Watch has a budget of 5,5% draw/hour, to meet her 18 hour battery life goal. I think we all agree you shouldn't have to switch off essential (or advertised) things like AOD, RTW, noise monitoring etc. to reach this goal.
I'm obviously excluding cellular here, as this is (and always has been) a major battery sucker. But all the other things are either advertised as a feature or switched on by default - so they should be fine to leave untouched while aiming for the 18 hours. Sadly, even with 6.1 and a swap of my S5 I am not able to reach this. This is a huge disappointment, as my 2 year old S3 with identical settings (as far as comparable) still comfortably lasts nearly 2 days - also on watchOS 6.

Edit: clarified watchOS version for comparison with my Series 3.
 
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On watchOS 6.1, I’m averaging 2.5 to 3% an hour.
The weird thing yesterday I was down to 55% at the end of the day but today down to 45%, even though all settings and number of notifications and workouts are similar. Have no idea why.
 
I have a Series 1 that is a year old. When I put it on the charger after 17 hours of use (before WatchOS 6.1), it had over 50% left.
Now that I have installed WatchOS 6.1 (the first 6 WatchOS 6 update for the Series 1), the battery is dead within 4-5 hours. I've turned everything off. Still doesn't make it 5 hours.
 
Turning off cellular and put it in theater mode I still got a 2% drain per hour during the night. So 24 standby showed now 27%. My take is that you can not get 2 days out of AW5 with AOD. Will try without AOD but regardless of outcome AOD is the reason I got AW5 so guess I will have to charge daily.
 
ok I'm on

3 hours usage
8 hours standby

with 71% left

think this is the best I have had since getting the series 5
 
The Game 161 said:
I fail to see how this is horrible battery life. It’s on track to give me more than the 18 hour that Apple says
Click to expand...
Yes, that’s because Apple is smart. They almost always underrate the battery life (Except on MacBook Pros). Like on iPad they rate it at 10 hours of usage but I comfortably get more than 14 hours, sometimes up to 17 hours of screen being on. Tested it by binge watching over a weekend many times. Interestingly, iPad has never had any problems with battery. Multiple models thru multiple years and battery is always fantastic. You know why? Because it’s enormous in size. Apple Watch Series 3 has also quoted battery life of 18 hours but guess what, it can go easily for full 2 and sometimes 3 days. Almost 72 hours. Series 4 can go around 48 hours, same as my Series 5 with AOD off. With AOD on it gets around 24 to max 30 hours - without exercise or GPS use. And, it’s not like this is the first iteration of the Watch. This is 5 years after.
To me that’s pathetic!! I would like to meet one person in the world that given a choice between great, multi-day battery life and pathetic one day battery life would choose the later.
i am just so upset at Apple (And myself) for letting us buy this crap I say this and then will be waking up at 3 AM next year to preorder Series 6!! 🤣.
Please Apple fix the battery life, at least for the next year. Thanks in advance!!!
 
akidokraja said:
To me that’s pathetic!! I would like to meet one person in the world that given a choice between great, multi-day battery life and pathetic one day battery life would choose the later.
Click to expand...
Of course we would all like as long a battery life as possible. But for me, AOD is worth the trade off as long as the watch still gets me through one day, which it does (I would charge overnight regardless, as I do with my phone).
 
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mrako84 said:
Hi guys! I upgraded from a Series 3 42 mm to a Series 4 44 mm, already updated to 6.0.1 and my battery life is catastrophic. On the first day of wearing it, it consumed 10% per hour. I took it off the charger at 7AM and the battery was completly drained (=0%) at 5PM. No particular use. No calls. No workouts. NO NOTHING. Only 10 hours of battery life. The day after (at 8AM) I took both watches off the charger and left them at home in stand-by. When I came back from work (at 2PM), the battery percentages were: 94% on S3 and 57% on S4. I repeat: BOTH doing NOTHING but stand-by. See pic attached.
Click to expand...

After updating my S4 44 mm to WatchOS 6.1, I got approximately the same battery life. It consumes 10% per hour.

Usage: 56 min
Standby: 4 hrs, 17 min
Battery: 58%

Background refresh: OFF
Noise detection: OFF

Now I am unpairing it and hard resetting it (erasing all data). We'll see... :confused:
 
That’s terrible, but I can relate to it. I did not test the standby consumption, but with normal usage my 2 year old S3 consumes only about a third of my S5. Comparable settings as far as applicable. AoD is off on the S5.
 
mrako84 said:
After updating my S4 44 mm to WatchOS 6.1, I got approximately the same battery life. It consumes 10% per hour.

Usage: 56 min
Standby: 4 hrs, 17 min
Battery: 58%

Background refresh: OFF
Noise detection: OFF

Now I am unpairing it and hard resetting it (erasing all data). We'll see... :confused:
Click to expand...
It happened to mine too at the beginning. I had to unpair and reset a couple of times and then after a week it stabilized. Better than your numbers but not great with AOD on.
 
akidokraja said:
Yes, that’s because Apple is smart. They almost always underrate the battery life (Except on MacBook Pros). Like on iPad they rate it at 10 hours of usage but I comfortably get more than 14 hours, sometimes up to 17 hours of screen being on. Tested it by binge watching over a weekend many times. Interestingly, iPad has never had any problems with battery. Multiple models thru multiple years and battery is always fantastic. You know why? Because it’s enormous in size. Apple Watch Series 3 has also quoted battery life of 18 hours but guess what, it can go easily for full 2 and sometimes 3 days. Almost 72 hours. Series 4 can go around 48 hours, same as my Series 5 with AOD off. With AOD on it gets around 24 to max 30 hours - without exercise or GPS use. And, it’s not like this is the first iteration of the Watch. This is 5 years after.
To me that’s pathetic!! I would like to meet one person in the world that given a choice between great, multi-day battery life and pathetic one day battery life would choose the later.
i am just so upset at Apple (And myself) for letting us buy this crap I say this and then will be waking up at 3 AM next year to preorder Series 6!! 🤣.
Please Apple fix the battery life, at least for the next year. Thanks in advance!!!
Click to expand...
but that's not the point though. if that's what they project the time to be can you really moan about it being horrible if you know what you are expecting to get?

do we want better battery life? of course but if if it last all day for me that's fine. I charge my iPhone every night even if its on 40-45% left. I put my iPhone and my watch on charge every night regardless. so if it lasts me from 7am until 23:00 to me it's doing it's job...my current battery life now I don't need to look at the battery % which is to me is more than enough...how it was before where I was on 30% by 7pm at night was the issue.
 
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It's my first Apple Watch, S3 without Cellular:

Background refresh for all Apple apps and AutoSleep + WaterMinder - On,
Listen for "Hey, Siri" - On,
Raise to Speak - Off,
All notifications - On

My numbers right now 12% of battery after:

Screenshot 2019-11-07 at 5.18.10 PM.png


I don't know is this numbers are good or not, but I think I will charge my watch every evening before I go to sleep.
 
I have not noticed any difference in battery life with 6.1. When I bought my watch it was on 6.0. I had a drain of about 3.5%/hour. With the 6.0.1 update, the drain was still about 3.5%/hour. I was hoping for something smaller with 6.1, but it is still about 3.5%/hour.

My watch is the least expensive GPS only, so no cell stuff to worry about. Just about everything is turned on (AOD, RTW, etc.). I do not have noise or a few background updates on. It does not seem to matter which watch face I use (so all day on solar dial doesn't have a big impact). I typically walk for about an hour using the workout app to track me.

I am fine with this, although I'd like to see somewhat better numbers just because I worry that as the battery ages eventually it won't last me all day. I do not mind charging it at night. With my previous (Timex) watch, I also removed the watch at night when I slept, so removing the Apple Watch does not change my routine.
 
mrako84 said:
After updating my S4 44 mm to WatchOS 6.1, I got approximately the same battery life. It consumes 10% per hour.

Usage: 56 min
Standby: 4 hrs, 17 min
Battery: 58%

Background refresh: OFF
Noise detection: OFF

Now I am unpairing it and hard resetting it (erasing all data). We'll see... :confused:
Click to expand...

I reset it, unpaired it, paired again, restored from backup. Nothing changed. Then I reset it again, unpaired it again, paired again but as a new watch. Nothing changed. Here are the result from last night. I charged it to 100% and then took it off the charger at midnight. This morning at 8AM (so, exactly 8 hours later) I got:

Usage: 29 min (How? I was sleeping while the Apple Watch was NOT on my wrist!)
Standby: 8 hrs
Battery: 35%

IT CONSUMED 65% OF THE BATTERY IN 8 HRS WITHOUT EVEN WEARING OR USING IT!!!

I think I will wait till the end of the year. If nothing changes, I will return it and ask for a replacement or a full refund. I am very upset. My S3 in performing like a champ in comparison.
 
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Wow I can't believe the downgrade in battery life. I use my AW3 for sleep tracking every night. Even with tracking my workouts in the mornings, having it on all day with theater mode off and using it fairly often, and sleep tracking all night with it off the charger I find I only have to charge it for 15 minutes twice a day, usually during my morning shower and getting ready for bed. Maybe this is why Apple didn't release the sleep tracking this year? With the reports that they are releasing native sleep tracking with the AW6 I'm sure they have to improve battery life.
 
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My AW5 battery life was great until I downloaded WatchOS 6.1.1beta Tuesday. Now it suddenly goes to red after just less than 5 hours. After unpairing and setting up as new again yesterday, here are my percentages: 3 pm 100%
4pm 93%, 5pm 88%, 6pm 83%, 6:50pm - RED lightning bolt. I Did File a radar.
UPDATE: 24 hours later, it was great battery life again. iMore had an article advising us to be patient after a new update to our watches. Apparently it was doing a lot of setup activity in the background. I will cancel the Radar.
 
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I bought my Series 4 (Cellular) back in june, coming from two Pebbles and three Android Wear / WearOS watches.

I much prefer the speed and functionality of the Apple Watch, but battery life has been a disappointment.

Right now I'm at 64% battery with 6:43 of Standby and 1:17 of Usage, but most days I struggle to get to 16 hours and I have to charge the watch before I go to sleep.
 
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