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The watchOS 10 battery life thread [MERGED]
- Thread starter szilske
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Really sorry guys, new to the thread: I have a S4 watch and noticed that the battery barely makes it to the late afternoon from an overnight charge. Just assumed it was getting old, but is this similar to what others are experiencing?
CHECK YOUR WEATHER COMPLICATIONS!
Sorry, this may have been mentioned before but I don't have the time to check right now, apologies.
I managed to get the battery back to normal consumption. I've followed the steps mentioned before (unpair watch, complete erase, remove all the 3rd party applications, fresh setup not from a backup) but I still had problems.
Then I did something out of intuition mainly: I kept only one watch face and I removed only the complication that did not require some form of background refresh. I found out that as long as I removed the weather complications the battery went back to work as normal.
So if you have weather complications you may want to remove them and see if that doing the trick.
Sorry, this may have been mentioned before but I don't have the time to check right now, apologies.
I managed to get the battery back to normal consumption. I've followed the steps mentioned before (unpair watch, complete erase, remove all the 3rd party applications, fresh setup not from a backup) but I still had problems.
Then I did something out of intuition mainly: I kept only one watch face and I removed only the complication that did not require some form of background refresh. I found out that as long as I removed the weather complications the battery went back to work as normal.
So if you have weather complications you may want to remove them and see if that doing the trick.
It is ridiculous. After first update to 10.1 it was fine. Yesterday I restore my iPhone 15 pro looking for a better battery performance. I set it as new. So I had to set watch as new too. Wow. Battery become sooo bad. I tried unparing (with and without backup). No luck. Hard reset? Yesterday it looked like it helps but at the end it didn't.
I ma so frustrated.
I ma so frustrated.
I hope, this is horrible. Last night I was at 20% but today, I'm at 5% and it's 2:32 in the afternoon.
Thought I'd provide an update to this:
So yes, I have lived with my Ultra watch set up anew for several days now including using it to run and listen to podcasts while on the run etc. Things do seem to have returned to normal insofar as battery life is concerned. I'm satisfied at this point.
Hope any of you with battery drain issues are able to get that resolved soon! To me, the battery health of a tiny device like the Watch is a much more delicate thing than an iPhone, so it's not good to have the Watch's battery drain like so in an unnecessary way.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/the-watchos-10-battery-life-thread-merged.2403181/post-32690122
So yes, I have lived with my Ultra watch set up anew for several days now including using it to run and listen to podcasts while on the run etc. Things do seem to have returned to normal insofar as battery life is concerned. I'm satisfied at this point.
Hope any of you with battery drain issues are able to get that resolved soon! To me, the battery health of a tiny device like the Watch is a much more delicate thing than an iPhone, so it's not good to have the Watch's battery drain like so in an unnecessary way.
You know I’ve never used moby app. I turned off auto offline playlist on Apple Music on my watch. I made one more hard reset and so far so good (I have weather widget on watch face). I also don’t have any third party app on it. To be honest I don’t even need them. Maybe one. So I will try install it and see what happens next.
I agreee that Apple Watch is way more delicate. Two reasons. First small battery. Second. Charging an iPhone is much more easier thing to do. Wireless charging or cable. Unfortunately Apple Watch requires special type of cable so you can’t charge it just like that in your car. Unless you have this cable with you but hey that’s not a solution.
Edit: It looks like battery is fine until I went for a walk with my dogs and I didn't take iPhone. Wow. On cellular it lost 4%. That's not normal even for cellular. What is strange that when I was setting up watch as new it install esim right away. Probably because of carrier app (orange) I have on iPhone. Anyway I thought that maybe this is a problem. So I delete esim and install a new one. We will see tomorrow if it helps.
UPDATE #2: After esim reinstall today when I was waking with my dogs lost maybe 1% in 20-25 minutes. For cellular 4G/LTE connection it is not that bad. Yesterday it was 3-4%. In general in 5h today I lost maybe 5%. Good. Like it should be (my s7 has 87% of original capacity).
I am also during another test. This time it is unlocking Mac option. I enabled it on my MacBook and I immediately lost 2%. I said ok fine. Maybe it is all about process initiation. I write down every lost %. Probably it is too early to say anything but I think that after enabling my watch will be losing not 2,2-2,4% (I know this is all about math calculation so lets say 2%) every hour but 4%. Is it a big difference? Well yes and no. Also if it is true what I am saying right now this type of draining should be visible only when we are close to our Macs. Unless it is another big bug and watch will be unlocking a tree I will be passing during car ride.
UPDATE #2,5: Something is definitely wrong with "unlock Mac with Apple Watch". From 9:00 to 14:00 (more or less) I've lost 11%. After enabling unlock option from 14:17 (88%) battery went down to 83% at 15:40. So in 1h 20 minutes I lost 5%.
UPDATE #3: After a home office day I left my home at 15:50 with this 83% battery mentioned before. I took my iPhone with me. After 10 minutes car ride battery dropped to 81%. I said "no way what the f". It is insane. It looks like iOS 10 has no idea what is going on. I made another hard reset. Battery lost immediately 2% but that's fine. Every device consumes more energy. After it reached 79% I stabilized again. It is 19:30 right now and I have 72%. Not that bad for sure. I didn't any workout today that's important. Especially that don't take phone with me when I am running.
I have no idea what we can do. Sometimes with the same environment same everything around us our watches work as usual but hour later they lose more % than before. Without any reason.
I agreee that Apple Watch is way more delicate. Two reasons. First small battery. Second. Charging an iPhone is much more easier thing to do. Wireless charging or cable. Unfortunately Apple Watch requires special type of cable so you can’t charge it just like that in your car. Unless you have this cable with you but hey that’s not a solution.
Edit: It looks like battery is fine until I went for a walk with my dogs and I didn't take iPhone. Wow. On cellular it lost 4%. That's not normal even for cellular. What is strange that when I was setting up watch as new it install esim right away. Probably because of carrier app (orange) I have on iPhone. Anyway I thought that maybe this is a problem. So I delete esim and install a new one. We will see tomorrow if it helps.
UPDATE #2: After esim reinstall today when I was waking with my dogs lost maybe 1% in 20-25 minutes. For cellular 4G/LTE connection it is not that bad. Yesterday it was 3-4%. In general in 5h today I lost maybe 5%. Good. Like it should be (my s7 has 87% of original capacity).
I am also during another test. This time it is unlocking Mac option. I enabled it on my MacBook and I immediately lost 2%. I said ok fine. Maybe it is all about process initiation. I write down every lost %. Probably it is too early to say anything but I think that after enabling my watch will be losing not 2,2-2,4% (I know this is all about math calculation so lets say 2%) every hour but 4%. Is it a big difference? Well yes and no. Also if it is true what I am saying right now this type of draining should be visible only when we are close to our Macs. Unless it is another big bug and watch will be unlocking a tree I will be passing during car ride.
UPDATE #2,5: Something is definitely wrong with "unlock Mac with Apple Watch". From 9:00 to 14:00 (more or less) I've lost 11%. After enabling unlock option from 14:17 (88%) battery went down to 83% at 15:40. So in 1h 20 minutes I lost 5%.
UPDATE #3: After a home office day I left my home at 15:50 with this 83% battery mentioned before. I took my iPhone with me. After 10 minutes car ride battery dropped to 81%. I said "no way what the f". It is insane. It looks like iOS 10 has no idea what is going on. I made another hard reset. Battery lost immediately 2% but that's fine. Every device consumes more energy. After it reached 79% I stabilized again. It is 19:30 right now and I have 72%. Not that bad for sure. I didn't any workout today that's important. Especially that don't take phone with me when I am running.
I have no idea what we can do. Sometimes with the same environment same everything around us our watches work as usual but hour later they lose more % than before. Without any reason.
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10.1.1 is out today specifically to fix battery drain - let's see how it plays out!
Awesome! I did look for an update around 2pm EDT but didn't see anything. I guess they issued this update rather late in the day which is unusual.
We should not keep removing or not using the features to get the same battery life. Anyway, watchOS 10.1.1 is released, hopefully this fix the issue.
The below post is a copy of reply I've just added to the news forum post on this issue and the update to 10.1.1
-----
I can confirm that, for me at least, this update has fixed the issue.
I have last year's Apple Watch Ultra and I was getting between 1.5 to 2 days battery life, which was the main reason why I bought the watch.
After the update to 10.1, I instantly went from this to having to charge the watch three times a day, so a six times increase in charging!
Not only that, but the charging itself was pausing without warning as the battery was overheating - which is something that had also never happened before.
This made the watch completely impractical to use and it happened from the moment I updated on the 26th of October until the release of 10.1.1
I actually stopped using the watch, because I was concerned about damaging my battery as I had looked after it and prior to 10.1, it was showing 100% battery health.
So for those who had been affected by this, it was a very serious bug and I'm glad to see the back of it.
I have had Apple products (not as long as some of you) but since the iPhone 3G - the second iPhone released.
I have also had Apple watches of four different flavours since the series 4 (not to mention iPads).
Until this point, I have always updated the software on every device upon release.
This experience has really shaken my faith on that though and I will think twice about upgrading immediately in the future – which of course puts my devices at risk.
In summary, this was a very poor release from Apple which seems to have affected a lot of people (judging by Apple's decision to release an internal memo on the subject) and I expect better – thankfully it doesn't seem to be a problem for me anymore and hopefully many others will experience the same with 10.1.1
--
EDIT:
I've added two photos to the post – these are screenshots from my Apple Watch battery section.
The one that shows 5% illustrates the slow discharge of my battery on watchOS 10, followed by the rapid decline immediately upon update to watchOS 10.1.
The one at 93% shows the problem appearing to be fixed after the update to 10.1.1, as you will see the discharge has slowed significantly.
-----
I can confirm that, for me at least, this update has fixed the issue.
I have last year's Apple Watch Ultra and I was getting between 1.5 to 2 days battery life, which was the main reason why I bought the watch.
After the update to 10.1, I instantly went from this to having to charge the watch three times a day, so a six times increase in charging!
Not only that, but the charging itself was pausing without warning as the battery was overheating - which is something that had also never happened before.
This made the watch completely impractical to use and it happened from the moment I updated on the 26th of October until the release of 10.1.1
I actually stopped using the watch, because I was concerned about damaging my battery as I had looked after it and prior to 10.1, it was showing 100% battery health.
So for those who had been affected by this, it was a very serious bug and I'm glad to see the back of it.
I have had Apple products (not as long as some of you) but since the iPhone 3G - the second iPhone released.
I have also had Apple watches of four different flavours since the series 4 (not to mention iPads).
Until this point, I have always updated the software on every device upon release.
This experience has really shaken my faith on that though and I will think twice about upgrading immediately in the future – which of course puts my devices at risk.
In summary, this was a very poor release from Apple which seems to have affected a lot of people (judging by Apple's decision to release an internal memo on the subject) and I expect better – thankfully it doesn't seem to be a problem for me anymore and hopefully many others will experience the same with 10.1.1
--
EDIT:
I've added two photos to the post – these are screenshots from my Apple Watch battery section.
The one that shows 5% illustrates the slow discharge of my battery on watchOS 10, followed by the rapid decline immediately upon update to watchOS 10.1.
The one at 93% shows the problem appearing to be fixed after the update to 10.1.1, as you will see the discharge has slowed significantly.
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I updated to 10.1.1 and charged to full right before I slept. 5 hours later after I woke up, I’m at 91%. Series 7/87% BH
Did you try hard reset? Sometimes an update especially OTA won't show you any improvement until you restart your device? Why? It is what it is? Some processes "files" etc have to be reset to start working properly.
From 10:30 (maybe 11:00) to 13:20 when I am righting this post I still have 100% on S7 with 87% capacity. It looks like improvement to me. Ok at 13:33 I have 99%. Still good as it was in the past.
It's time to do another tests and try install third party apps turn on unlocking Mac etc. Step by step to see if anything drains battery more.
I think the same. My first Apple's device was an iPod touch and half year later iPhone 3GS. The worst thing is that these kind of bugs really affect your day. You have to be careful what you do or remember to take charging cable with you. I can even open and drive my Tesla with my watch only. It could be a disaster for someone. Last iOS has battery problems too. It is not just a problem.
There is also a difference between iOS and watchOS because iOS we can install through iTunes on windows or finder on Mac. IPSW method download whole software. We can't do this on watch (maybe it is possible but not that easy and not official way).
I updated from 9.6.3 to 10.1.1. So far so good. No battery life horror stories. It does seem more power hungry than OS9 but I think there's always going to be some trade off between new features and battery consumption.
I kept a few 9.6.3 battery graphs and after a couple of days with 10.1.1 I'll collect some more to compare, but my gut feel is that it's good.
I kept a few 9.6.3 battery graphs and after a couple of days with 10.1.1 I'll collect some more to compare, but my gut feel is that it's good.
UPDATE: After my very positive feedback earlier I installed one third party app. Watchla to have an access to my Tesla from Watch. Wow. I've lost 6-7% in 1,5h (maybe even faster because I didn't check it properly). Nevertheless third party apps can still drain you battery way quicker than it was in the past.