Watch 4 battery life much worse than Watch 3

[tangfish]

Apple are just trying to be consistent across product lines; my XS battery life is a big downgrade from the X.

 

[Mike Boreham]

I have the exact same problem. Also similarly, If I restart the watch it goes back to normal usage. I’m wondering if our circumstances are unique or if all the Series 4 are performing like this.

I suspect a very large number of AW4s do similar, but only a very small proportion are noticed by their owners. Some may note that there are good days and bad days, but since most people put it on charge every night, and it always lasts through the day, they are not too concerned. There are quite a few threads where AW4 owners have noted variable battery life, but very few where they have linked it to a process causing high usage/standby.

I was relieved to discover my watch going back to normal usage without a restart. Before that I feared that once the mystery process had kicked in it would only be stopped by a restart.

One period of high usage in eight days is not too bad. I am going to continue recording the daily stats.
[doublepost=1550664156][/doublepost]

It might just be that we both have some kind of defect in our watch. After 27 hours of normal battery use, my watch went full drain over night. So back to square one.

I did speak to Apple Support last week. They did a battery and hardware test remotely and said my device passed those tests. They sent me a box to send the watch for further inspection and hopefully repair or exchange. I guess I'll need to do this next.

Have you done this? What did they say?

 

[Mikeeee]

I suspect a very large number of AW4s do similar, but only a very small proportion are noticed by their owners. Some may note that there are good days and bad days, but since most people put it on charge every night, and it always lasts through the day, they are not too concerned. There are quite a few threads where AW4 owners have noted variable battery life, but very few where they have linked it to a process causing high usage/standby.

I was relieved to discover my watch going back to normal usage without a restart. Before that I feared that once the mystery process had kicked in it would only be stopped by a restart.

One period of high usage in eight days is not too bad. I am going to continue recording the daily stats.
[doublepost=1550664156][/doublepost]

Have you done this? What did they say?

I received the box but didn’t send it in. Decided to continue testing instead. I don’t think it’s a hardware problem. It seems to be more of a software issue. Lately I’ve been putting the watch in airplane mode and theater mode over night. After 2 nights of airplane mode the battery usage didn’t shoot up over night. This was happening almost consistently over night.