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The watchOS 10 battery life thread [MERGED]

S

szilske

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 10, 2015
106
34
Germany
I installed the watchOS 10 RC last week and apparently it's the same as the final version. I own an AppleWatch Series 5 and so far I was perfectly happy with it, after a full day at the office I easily had 25%ish left of battery life. I would say it lasted up to 16hrs.

But now, with watchOS 10 my battery life is down to less than 12hrs. What is your exeprience? I hoped that they would fix it with the final release, but they haven't.
 
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Same watch, same issue for me.
Watch has been replaced by Apple last December (battery)

Now battery life is horrible, I have tried:
- unpair/pair
- restore my backup
=> no improvement
- unpair/pair
- install as a new watch
=> no improvement
uninstall as much apps as possible
=> no improvement
on the iPhone:
- reset location/authorizations
- reset network settings
=> no improvement

Of course, I have let time for my watch to settle after setups.
I have this problem since beta 7, 8 and RC

Next step is to restore the iPhone, but I doubt it will help
I receive my future Ultra2 on Friday, I don't want to have a weird bug that eats all my battery. I want to start with a clean state
 
Last edited:
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I am tempted to upgrade to a Series 9 but that might be what Apple intended, so I'll withstand a little longer 😃

Seriously, if I am not the only one, that seems to be a software issue of some sort. Let's hope for a 10.1 beta.
 
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Could it be related to optimised charging? My watch (S8 running the iOS10 RC) was only charging to 80% in the morning, until I switched optimised charging off.
 
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Same here, but might be due to the fact that the watch did some stuff in the background and used up power. Let's see how it plays out.
 
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farleysmaster said:
Could it be related to optimised charging? My watch (S8 running the iOS10 RC) was only charging to 80% in the morning, until I switched optimised charging off.
Click to expand...
Where can I toggle this? I cannot find anything related in Series 5 settings. And I think my watch was fully charged in the morning.
 
Mine is noticeably worse already today after updating to watchOS 10 last night and allowing it to fully charge. I remembered to take a screenshot of the last 24 hours of battery history in Settings > Battery before updating, so I'll give it a few days and then compare it to see how different the slopes of the graphs are for an average day.
 
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I installed the update on Sunday evening (RC).
It was worse yesterday, but today seems to be okay. I guess it was still indexing.
Run WatchOS 10 for a few days to get a better impression of battery life ;)

Battery health on my S4 was 82% before the update and it's still at 82% now.
 
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rbart said:
I think it's a bug in iOS17 and/or watchOS10.
I estimate the battery loss around 30%, I can't imagine they can live with that.
Click to expand...
I have a series 6. I upgraded middle of the day yesterday, charged it up, used it for the remainder of the day, put it back on the charger and grabbed it at 5am to go for a 6km walk. Normally my watch would be maybe 90% depleted, but it went down to 69%. I have next to no extra apps running either, so will be interesting to see how it goes as they release patches.

Watch battery health is at 82% as well. Was hoping to squeeze another year out of this thing.
 
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It's very unlikely that a 3rd party app can eat battery in background
watchOS is very conservative and doesn't allow developers to do what they want. It kills hungry app, avoids long background tasks.
Only widgetkit is allowed to wake up some apps to update widgets. But the allowed budget for that is very low and it can eat battery in a noticeable way.
My guess is that one OS task is eating to much, or tries to connect too many times on the iPhone, or crashes frequently ...
It doesn't happen for everyone, but like watchOS is a blackbox, it's hard to troubleshot.

Since I have reset my network settings yesterday, it seems to be a bit better. Not sure, but let's see how it goes ...
 
I took my S4 of the charger on 6:45 AM at 100%
Right now, it's 3:12 PM (where I live) and I'm at 76% now.
I did unpair the watch and restored from a back-up after installing the RC.
 
szilske said:
Down from 100 to 25% in about 7hrs.
Click to expand...
That's the rate of consumption I'm experiencing so far and I haven't done any exercise yet. Hopefully after another full charge and a restart it will improve, because if it doesn't it's a 50% drop in usable capacity.
 
Another sneaky Apple tactic to get you to upgrade?

I ordered my S9 to replace my S7.

IMG_1FA017D899B6-1.jpeg
 
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