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The watchOS 10 battery life thread [MERGED]
- Thread starter szilske
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I updated my Watch S8 3 days ago. HORRIBLE battery life. Was at 100% at 8am. After 4 hours, down to 66%. No widgets installed. Minimal use. Something is very wrong here.
So reddit beta folks said that at some point during the beta this was an issue, and the only fix the dev folks found was to wipe all settings on the iphone and then setup up the settings as new on the iphone, and then repair the watch to the iphone and the issue would resolve. I do not think this is acceptable answer, however i just wanted to share with everyone, as i have not tried it my self, the reports were yes this solved the issues however, very angry beta testers. The bug seems to have made it into 17 / watch os 10
Let me add my own experience because today it seems to be completely fixed for me.
So no clue. It got fixed by itself. Maybe something server side. Maybe the Watch really needs to settle after an update, but my battery woes have been happening from Monday. That's a long settle period. I'm on Series 7.
- I restarted the Watch and the phone -> did not solve the issue
- I deleted the weather widget -> did not solve the issue
- I deleted all widgets -> did not solve the issue
- I unpaired/repaired my watch -> did not solve all the issue
- I deleted all watch faces, kept the Chronograph Pro watch face with zero complications -> did not solve the issue
- I killed the Watch app on the phone thinking it could be stuck and over communicating (although apps in background are frozen) -> did not solve the issue
- I turned off optimized charging -> did not solve the issue
So no clue. It got fixed by itself. Maybe something server side. Maybe the Watch really needs to settle after an update, but my battery woes have been happening from Monday. That's a long settle period. I'm on Series 7.
That certainly gives those of us who haven't upgraded yet, some hope.
I used to work for a company that wrote simulation software for industry. Our most successful product was 50,000-100,000 lines of old FORTRAN code that had been written and updated for 15-20 years.. Some of the software guys there told me no one knew what all the subroutines really did anymore. I wonder if the Apple engineers know what all of the old subroutines in iOS, watchOS, etc do?
It seems like Apple should be able to figure out a way to not put us through a week of misery eveytime they release a new OS. I guess as long as we continue to be willing to be the beta testers, they dont need to lol.
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My S5 has been pretty bad since the update to watchOS10 but has definitely gotten better the last couple of days. Before I would barely get through 12 hours of very light usage, now I’m getting closer to 15 hours….still not as good as the 18 hours I was getting on WatchOS 9.
There’s definitely a bug that Seems to be causing nearly every model including the newest to lose about 10 percent per hour. No reason any series 9 should get less than a day usage. That’s obnoxious
There’s definitely a bug that Seems to be causing nearly every model including the newest to lose about 10 percent per hour. No reason any series 9 should get less than a day usage. That’s obnoxious
I think it's a possible solution. Since the beginning, I suspect something wrong on the iOS17 side.
Hmm... that seems like one of the last options for me, too. Maybe I'll give it a try today. Or I'll wait for watchOS 10.1 beta later today or tomorrow.
Surprisingly, yesterday I had pretty decent battery life - almost like with watchOS 9! Ended up with about 30% after ~15 hours of usage (including 45 min. workout!). But today I'm back to the old behavior. Put my watch on 3.5 hours ago and did nothing with it: now at 76%...
WHAT IS WRONG???Maybe it has something to do with the weather app (which still doesn't sync my list of cities I have on the iPhone but otherwise is working). Or - as I'm writing - I realized that I used a different watch face yesterday (the new Nike globe thing) and today I'm back to the new Solar one! Hmm...
to force sync of weather app cities between iPhone and Watch, you can add a dummy city on your iPhone and then delete it from the list.
It will force sync to the watch (but not fix you battery issues)
I have replaced my S5 by an ultra 2 since last Friday. Battery is very impressive now.
I have tested a lot of tricks to try to fix my S5 without any success. My battery health was good enough (93%) but the actual battery life with watchOS10 was awful.
I am curious about the reset all settings stuff.
It can be very helpful.
It will force sync to the watch (but not fix you battery issues)
I have replaced my S5 by an ultra 2 since last Friday. Battery is very impressive now.
I have tested a lot of tricks to try to fix my S5 without any success. My battery health was good enough (93%) but the actual battery life with watchOS10 was awful.
I am curious about the reset all settings stuff.
It can be very helpful.
Okay so I had one day where my S4 lasted me 12 hours and I thought everything was fine (albeit still worse life than under watchOS9). But today it has just lost 38% charge in the 45 minutes its been on my wrist.
Honestly what is the actual point of all the beta releases if they can't catch simple issues like this?
Honestly what is the actual point of all the beta releases if they can't catch simple issues like this?
I'm noticing the same thing on my new 41mm Series 9. The battery readout seems to be very non-linear. For about the first 4 hours it was dropping about 10% per hour with no workouts and not doing much apart from sitting on my wrist and doing its usual background stuff (heart, blood-ox, hand-shake with phone etc). 4 hours in I was at 60% and on that basis I predicted that my watch would die at about 8pm that evening but in fact it lasted all the way through to about 1am when I put it on the charger with about 20% battery left and that included an about 1.5 hour outdoor walk workout.
My S9 battery life still isn't as good as my S7 with WatchOS 9.<latest> but it's not in the "I'm sending this back" territory any more and I'm hopeful that maybe there is stuff that still needs to settle down so I might see further improvements. In fact I already am. I just looked and I've had my watch on for 5 hours today (starting from 100% overnight charge) with about 1.5 hours of workouts during that time and it's still reporting 80% battery so at least for me it seems to have been a transient issue.
Don't want to defend Apple here. Just try a possible explanation.
On betas you get only a very small number of your overall user base. Typically tech savvy people who participate in the beta program with an attitude like "well, sure the battery drains but it is a beta so I will not report it". So only a small portion of a small portion reports the problems (you can read the beta thread or tldr: some reported battery drain at the first betas and most of them said when we reached the RC: it is ok now).
When releasing to a public is a different game.
As stated before: I would propose catching system information during the beta phase to get this confirmation bias out of the game.
Don't forget the public are there to help out. There should be vast internal testing of every combination of devices they are supporting including real world usage
My Ultra 1 battery has been great until Watch OS10. Unfortunately Watch OS10 absolutely ruined my battery, I have also updated to 10.0.1 but no improvement. As an endurance athlete I depended on the 12+ hour Multiband GPS of the Ultra but seems like it may not be the case anymore until Apple fixes this. Really annoying, paying so much for a premium device and it's ruined with an update.
Similar roadmap to me and I thought I'd got on top of it after a full days use on Saturday, but today I'm down to 19% after having it on my wrist for 3 hours with barely any use
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Mine didn't relapse into the battery draining yet and is still going strong. I'll report back if it does. Try to kill also all running apps on the watch just to see. Maybe one of the third party ones you use needs an update or has issues with Watch OS 10. I still have no clue what fixed it on my side.
Same here. My series 5 is draining like crazy since watchOS 10 was installed. Yesterday, I turned of AOD and switch to Wake on Wrist Raise. Seems to be doing better for me, still draining faster than watchOS 9 though.
Also, the weather complications have become completely useless with watchOS 10.0.1.
Well guys, I did it... I reset my iPhone settings (this automatically causes the watch to unpair and reconnect with the phone). It's been 4 hours and the battery went from 85% down to 66%. But I did a 45 min. workout and used the watch quite a bit. So I lost 19% in 4 hours. That's about 4,75% per hour but including a workout.Hmm... that seems like one of the last options for me, too. Maybe I'll give it a try today. Or I'll wait for watchOS 10.1 beta later today or tomorrow.
Surprisingly, yesterday I had pretty decent battery life - almost like with watchOS 9! Ended up with about 30% after ~15 hours of usage (including 45 min. workout!). But today I'm back to the old behavior. Put my watch on 3.5 hours ago and did nothing with it: now at 76%...
Maybe it has something to do with the weather app (which still doesn't sync my list of cities I have on the iPhone but otherwise is working). Or - as I'm writing - I realized that I used a different watch face yesterday (the new Nike globe thing) and today I'm back to the new Solar one! Hmm...
This morning I lost 35% in 6 hours - that was nearly 6% per hour without working out or doing anything.
So maybe I'm on the track back to a decent battery life.
But as a heavy Apple user since 2005 (MacBooks, iPods, the first iPhone in 2007...) I've never expereinced such bad software before... it seems like it's getting worse.
EDIT: Wow... and battery drain is back! Lost 10% in the last 30 minutes! This sucks. I'm about to throw this ****** watch away.
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Drain here. Also not.
Wife and I both have 40mm AW6. Same age. Same usage. Same exercise routine.
Hers is fine. Normal drain and end of the day 30%+
Me however it’s dead by 8pm.
The only difference is I have Carrot weather installed, she does not and I set mine up from fresh when OS 10 was released while hers was a full in place upgrade.
Wife and I both have 40mm AW6. Same age. Same usage. Same exercise routine.
Hers is fine. Normal drain and end of the day 30%+
Me however it’s dead by 8pm.
The only difference is I have Carrot weather installed, she does not and I set mine up from fresh when OS 10 was released while hers was a full in place upgrade.
I'm close to saying "working as before" for me. Woke up this morning at 55%, which is in range to what I usually see.
Removed the Weather widget from the widget screen. And only complications I use is date/Calendar on a couple faces. Workout faces are the only ones that have a bunch of complications and those faces are only used a couple of hours per day.
So possibly bad news for those that are big complication users, appears something really messed up with complications and or widgets that need to be fixed by Apple, and hopefully soon.
Removed the Weather widget from the widget screen. And only complications I use is date/Calendar on a couple faces. Workout faces are the only ones that have a bunch of complications and those faces are only used a couple of hours per day.
So possibly bad news for those that are big complication users, appears something really messed up with complications and or widgets that need to be fixed by Apple, and hopefully soon.