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The watchOS 10 battery life thread [MERGED]
- Thread starter szilske
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It looks as if I have problems with my brand new Series 9 41mm. I first started playing with it last night and only had it on for about 1.5 hours but by the time I put it on the charger and went to bed the battery was down to 85%. Today I took it off the charger at 100% about an hour ago and it is already down to 90% so, admittedly based on only 2 data points so far, that seems to indicate about 10% battery drain per hour. It's 11:22am right now so if the behaviour I've observed so far continues my watch will die at about 8:30pm tonight.
I have AOD set to on, background refresh globally disabled, and Siri is activated only via the crown rather than listening for "Hey Siri".
My series 7 (due for trade in but not yet sent back) with 84% battery health and whatever the latest version of WatchOS prior to 10.0 installed still gets me to the end of an 18 hour day with at least 60 mins of workouts each day with about 30% battery remaining when I put it on the charger at bedtime. That's a drain of about 4% per hour and that's with a battery that has lost 16% of its health and doing workouts that I haven't done with my new s9 yet, in fact it hasn't even left my house yet.
Let's see how this goes but if things don't settle down in a few days then Apple had better acknowledge and fix this pretty quickly otherwise my S9 is getting returned in the 21 day window and I'll stick with my s7 on WatchOS 9.x for as long as I can.
(I just lost another 1% on the battery while typing this message - now down to 89% remaining.)
I have AOD set to on, background refresh globally disabled, and Siri is activated only via the crown rather than listening for "Hey Siri".
My series 7 (due for trade in but not yet sent back) with 84% battery health and whatever the latest version of WatchOS prior to 10.0 installed still gets me to the end of an 18 hour day with at least 60 mins of workouts each day with about 30% battery remaining when I put it on the charger at bedtime. That's a drain of about 4% per hour and that's with a battery that has lost 16% of its health and doing workouts that I haven't done with my new s9 yet, in fact it hasn't even left my house yet.
Let's see how this goes but if things don't settle down in a few days then Apple had better acknowledge and fix this pretty quickly otherwise my S9 is getting returned in the 21 day window and I'll stick with my s7 on WatchOS 9.x for as long as I can.
(I just lost another 1% on the battery while typing this message - now down to 89% remaining.)
Ditto. Your figure is about consistent with my estimate that on my 41mm s9 I am draining about 10% battery per hour. You're drain is even slightly higher than mine but you have done workouts with your watch whereas I haven't.
I also set up as new and have background refresh turned off. My complications are activities (rings), reminders and calendar all of which is quite static locally stored data; they certainly caused no problems on my S7.
Like you my S9 is definitely going back if Apple doesn't fix this. At the very least I would like Apple to acknowledge that there is an issue that they are working on in the next few days because such a poor out-of-the-box experience really isn't acceptable and a watch that can't make it through the day when a 2-year old version can do so easily is simply not fit for purpose.
Screw-ups happen. Even the best software development teams will sometimes have really bad bugs that slip through to a release version so I accept a few hiccups along the way but I do judge companies on how they respond to issues. The way that Apple is sometimes so slow to acknowledge an issue, I suspect because it doesn't want to tarnish its reputation by admitting it ever makes mistakes, really feels to me like a company putting itself before its customers which is why I would like to see a statement to give people like you and me some reassurance that things will be fixed rather than leaving us to twist in the wind.
My Serie 4 has just drain from 84% charge, after 2 min on my arm my watch was drain so much that I have to put the charger on again, could not boot up.
Also having issues with my Series 8. Took it off the charger at 6:30am, now 6 hours later I am on 65% and that is just having it on my wrist. No workouts or anything. Have turned off the AOD to save battery. Charge it to 100% before going to bed and use it as my alarm. On watchOS 9 I would wake up with 94-96% left and now it’s 80% and that’s with the screen off and the watch in DND.
Did support give you any helpful information at all? I was debating contacting them. I did report it.
Not really, just asked how I used it day to day. Ran a test to collect logs, said that they couldn’t see anything and that it was all working fine and my battery health was above 90% and then sent me a link on what to expect from my Apple Watch.
I did such a remote session a while ago where they checked the GPS of my watch. My impressions as a technical guy was, that these tests are pure hardware tests and do not say much apart from the device is ok or not.
As for a problem like battery draining, it should be fairly easy to analyze by doing logging which process uses what amount of CPU time or doing network stuff and which sensor is active when.
Having turned off AOD, the battery drain has slowed but still doesn’t explain why I’m loosing 20% in the night with DND and the screen off
I changed to the Snoopy app and noticed a big battery drain too. I am guessing that perhaps it is on my watch 7 and that might have something too. the battery capacity is 88%, so I turned off the battery optimize so it would go above 80%. I do like the Snoopy and can charge it more often. Maybe when my new watch shows up that won't be an issue.
Series 7, watchOS 10.0.1
Had it up to 94% before bed. When I work up at 5am, it had dropped ~66% (screen off, on my wrist while sleeping).
Yesterday, was on flights in the morning so had it in airplane AND low power mode and the drop was still signficant.
Had it up to 94% before bed. When I work up at 5am, it had dropped ~66% (screen off, on my wrist while sleeping).
Yesterday, was on flights in the morning so had it in airplane AND low power mode and the drop was still signficant.
So I recharged my S4 again to only 86% put it on, and after about 2 hours after 5-6000 steps in a mall, I am stil on 86% battery.
I just can't figure it out, no drain for more then 2 hours with 86% charge, if charge to 100% I will reach 86% in less then 2 hours with very few steps.
I just can't figure it out, no drain for more then 2 hours with 86% charge, if charge to 100% I will reach 86% in less then 2 hours with very few steps.
I noticed yesterday that I get a huge drop when using workouts on the watch. Did a 30 minute outdoor bike ride and lost 20% on my battery, which is nuts.
Ok, after 36 hours on new S9 battery life and the smoothness of the OS have improved considerably. Also the battery complication and control center are matching up a lot better like they did on my S7. This is only my 2nd AW so I didn't know how the transition would respond.
Maybe the drain is happening because the watch is still indexing. Happens every year after a new watchOs. Could take up to a week to complete. But I noticed the drain too, with a brand new AWU2. Looking forward to the next AW update. Apple will fix this soon.
Better than expected battery life in my new S9.
So far, it can hold a charge for 2 days without recharging.
Had to turn off battery optimization in order to get to 100%.
Love my S9 over the S7 I traded in which lasted 1 day.
What you say makes a lot of sense, but I have to say I’ve never had an issue with severe drain on my watch batteries. My ultra 2 is performing exactly as my ultra 1 did
We’re knocking on a week since the update (I updated mine on Monday). Indexing seems far fetched.
I’ve tried going back to my pre OS10 watch face and while that helped a little I’m barely getting 1.5 days out of my ultra.
I’ve tried going back to my pre OS10 watch face and while that helped a little I’m barely getting 1.5 days out of my ultra.
24hr update. It’s better….but not sure if it’s back to original behavior. after 24hr my watch was down to 50%. That included a total of 3.5hrs of fitness tracking. One thing I noticed yesterday was that the temp complication on my watch face wasn’t updating...never had that issue before.…so I just removed that complication in case it was causing the watch to go through some constant loop trying to update it.
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Agreed.
When noticed that battery life seemed to be worse (SE, May 2021), started to track with real number. Was real bad on Friday, but might have leveled out some.
So far today, seeing 1%/hr. The 2.48%/hr value was after using the Timer app a number of times. Did wake up with the Watch at about 5-6% lower than usual (42%) on Saturday, but also did not charge the Watch the day before up to "normal" level (usually around 96-98%, came off charger at 94%, wake-up usually in 52-62% range).
Just removed the Weather widget from the screen, will see if that helps some and have no need for it on the widget screen anyway.
(EDIT: one hour later, just dropped 4%, so now at 2%/hr, which if hold, will be close to normal pre-10 levels)
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