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The watchOS 10 battery life thread [MERGED]

Saturn007 said:
I'd recommend everyone having problems with battery life letting Apple know directly, both by calling support and submitting formal feedback.

“Feedback - Watch

Apple wants to hear from you. Send us your comments and feedback about Apple Watch.”

www.apple.com

Feedback - Watch

Apple wants to hear from you. Send us your comments and feedback about Apple Watch.
www.apple.com



Was wondering what advantages you found to leaving Bluetooth on? Is this so that Emergency SOS can work via a connected iPhone? What else?

We have cellular Apple Watches and leave Airplane Mode on all day. (We turn it on when we want weather updated.)

We also turn the watches off overnight. I've been easily getting 4 days of battery life with my Series 7.
Click to expand...
I am not exactly sure who this guy is, but he seems to be a guru Apples community forums.in the link below, he is discussing Bluetooth power draws on iOS, but watchOS is a lot the same. I turned off WiFi on my watch, because I don’t really need it, but I leave Bluetooth on because there are apps that need to talk to the phone from the watch. For example, I use the Cycle workout app on my phone. It talks to my iphone using BT to relay information (heart etc)about the workout which displays on my iPhone screen I real time. In addition I sometimes want to listen to music while I work out that isn’t on my watch. That again uses Bluetooth. As several of my last posts above have chronicled, I‘m getting great battery life with an SE 1st gen on watchOS 10.0.1, and iOS 17 on my phone. Anyway here is the link. Hope your battery life clears up soon.

 
segundo said:
Following Apple's recommended resolution for the Weather complications issues appears to have improved my battery consumption:
  1. On your iPhone, open the Settings app, then tap Privacy & Security -> Location Services.
  2. Scroll down and tap Weather.
  3. Under Allow Location Access, tap Never, then tap your original setting.
  4. Check whether the issue is resolved.
Click to expand...

I can confirm this did nothing. I reset privacy and location yesterday. Took my watch off the charger at 10:27 pm at 100% and went into sleep focus from 10:30 pm to 6 am. Woke up at 90%. I’m roughly 19 hours in now and am at 59%. Prior to OS10 I would have been around 75-ish.

…and oh, my weather widgets still don’t load.

OS10 is garbage.
 
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secretanchitman said:
Honestly my battery life was fine going to WatchOS 10.0 and even 10.0.1 but as soon as I updated my phone to 17.0.3, the battery life has dropped to the point where I don't even make it the entire day like
Click to expand...
Thanks - now I'm afraid to update to 17.0.3. This morning my Ultra seems back to normal battery consumption after a week of highly variable battery drain. Yesterday, after a 12K cycle out for breakfast it had gone from 100% to 65%. Today, after the same ride, it was 91%.

No idea what's next.
 
Buadhai said:
Thanks - now I'm afraid to update to 17.0.3. This morning my Ultra seems back to normal battery consumption after a week of highly variable battery drain. Yesterday, after a 12K cycle out for breakfast it had gone from 100% to 65%. Today, after the same ride, it was 91%.

No idea what's next.
Click to expand...

I never really had issues with overheating but I always update - just very strange that my watch S6 is affected and everything else stayed the same.
 
After trying all of the recommended fixes and such for my AWU1 I decided to try an Ultra 2 so I could see if it was any better. Figured I could get $380 for my Ultra 1 so why not.

No difference whatsoever in battery drain. So tonight I decided to unpair my AWU2 and start over as a new watch. It wasn’t really all that bad. Took maybe 10-15 minutes for the unpairing and re-pairing process…then another 10 minutes getting it set up the way I like it. After that I charged it up to 100% and we’ll see how it goes from here.
 
Saturn007 said:
Was wondering what advantages you found to leaving Bluetooth on?
Click to expand...
Because it kind of needs Bluetooth to talk to my phone?

Bluetooth is lower energy than WiFi and I don’t have cellular.

You also don’t need to turn your cellular on or off. It will not use it when in range of your phone.

I don’t believe in micromanaging my devices to save 1% battery like that.

I wear it during the day. Charge at night.
 
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the only thing I turned off was dictation as I don't use it anyways and this morning my watch charge has not dropped at all after an hour. I'll see what the day brings. My husband just updated his watch last night so I'm very interested to see if he has the battery drain or not.
 
Debauch said:
I can confirm this did nothing. I reset privacy and location yesterday. Took my watch off the charger at 10:27 pm at 100% and went into sleep focus from 10:30 pm to 6 am. Woke up at 90%. I’m roughly 19 hours in now and am at 59%. Prior to OS10 I would have been around 75-ish.

…and oh, my weather widgets still don’t load.

OS10 is garbage.
Click to expand...

Sadly I have to agree, this did not resolve my battery consumption issues. After just 70 minutes my Apple Watch 4 with 83% battery life has gone from 100% to 83%.

Update: At 50% some 9 hours later, which does seem about where I was with Watch OS 9. Maybe it has improved after all in my case.
 
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Diopter said:
Yes, see my post here: #211

I set mine up from scratch without restoring a backup and I no longer have the rapid battery consumption that I had after upgrading to watchOS 10. The difference has been night and day for me, but for other people the problem persists, so there are no guarantees.
Click to expand...
I've unpaired and restored as new two times, I was having problems with the correct location on my weather app. Battery is still draining too quickly. :confused:
 
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So far. The only thing that affects my battery life is the watch face.

background app refresh, widgets. On or off the battery remains the same.

But different watch faces cause drain. The portraits one for example uses 15% more in a day.
 
So I looked at what low power mode disables. I wanted to see if I leave LPM off and And I disable couple settings manually if it would help.
  • Background blood oxygen measurements
  • Start Workout Reminder
Left the other settings. I already disable Always on. I think this is helping with the faster battery drain that was happening. I pulled it off the charger 2hrs ago. And it's currently at 96%. Lets see how much the watch drains the rest of the evening.
 
Battery was a lot better today but I didn't do anything different except come home a little earlier from work.

Will monitor throughout the weekend since I'll be out and about.
 
I seem to have some days where the battery drains fast, and others where it lasts a long time.

No change in usage pattern.

Hopefully a bug that will be fixed sometime.
 
segundo said:
Update: At 50% some 9 hours later, which does seem about where I was with Watch OS 9. Maybe it has improved after all in my case.
Click to expand...

After wearing my watch through a full night of sleep, it is at 29%. Historically this is what I was seeing with Watch OS 9.
 
Updated my iPhone to 10.0.3 yesterday. Changed nothing on my watch. Now the weather portion of the watch face was not updating. Battery dropped from 100% to 67% in a little over an hour. I've had excellent battery life prior to this change. For some reason, the weather app is now behaving again (I changed nothing) Will see how it goes today. Im going to put the watch on the charger and when its 100, I'll see how long it lasts today.

This points to the culprit being the iPhone OS as the weather app culprit. It seems Apple screws up the communication link between the phone and the watch apps when they do an update.
 
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secretanchitman said:
Battery was a lot better today but I didn't do anything different except come home a little earlier from work.

Will monitor throughout the weekend since I'll be out and about.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I'm wondering about my work wifi potentially being a culprit in my battery issues, as I came home early yesterday from work and my battery lasted longer than it has been this week. I'm home all weekend here so we'll see how it plays out with 2 days of home wifi.
 
I read that the battery drain is caused by a location bug in watchOS 10. Setting the location manually reduces battery usage from 7.4 to less than 5 percentage per hour according to https://www.newmobilelife.com/2023/10/03/watchos-10-省電/

Preference:
Watch>General>Language & Region>Custom>CUSTOM_LOCATION

Hope this helps.
 
Is there any link to battery life and multiple devices? My watch is showing multiple active devices (Settings>Health> Devices), as in 19 devices when I only have my iPhone and my watch, series 4. It could be from previous pairings but it won't let me delete a lot of the devices listed. Anyone know why it shows so many active devices and how to eliminate them?
 
bojj80 said:
My watch is showing multiple active devices (Settings>Health> Devices), as in 19 devices when I only have my iPhone and my watch, series 4.
Click to expand...
That's normal and it's always been that way. Each previous Apple Watch (or even pairing of the same watch, I think) is shown as a separate device. I believe if you delete a device from that list it may delete the data that came from that device, i.e. you'll lose Health history, so you probably don't want to delete any of them.

The same list has historically been available on iPhone > Settings > Health > Data Access & Devices. It's normal.
 
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Battery was a hell of a lot better today but I also didn't use fitness (outdoor walk and traditional strength training for 2 hours).

Will continue monitoring!
 
+1 for anecdotal unpairing and re-pairing helping return things to normal: I got my iPhone 15 Pro a few days ago, and after migrating my watch to the new phone, which appears to effectively be a re-pairing, battery life appears to be much improved.
 
My watch battery only now charges to 80% under optimized charging. Is this expected? My watch is S7.
 
Unfortunately this is entirely unpredictable. The support article vaguely states: “When the feature is turned on, your watch delays charging past 80% in certain situations.”

I am a creature of habit with a very predictable daily routine. However, optimized charging remains entirely unpredictable. Sometimes it charges to 100%, sometimes to 80%.

I have to wonder what “situations” I have in my life that cause such unpredictable variation.
 
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