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Watch Battery with iOS9

G

gppittjk

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 19, 2012
143
59
Hi all,

In the two days that I've had iOS9 (admittedly a small sample), my watch batter has taken a heck of a hit. I generally end the day with 30-40% of my battery left, but the last two days I've been under 15%, today under 10%. It seems like there is something running in the background, as my usage shows 5 hours today and that just doesn't match up to my use cases - I had a 26 minute workout and a handful of notifications. Has anyone else run into anything like this?

Edit: It's got to be something in the background. Usage continues to go up as it is off my wrist and on the charger. 11 straight minutes of usage without even being on my wrist. What could be chewing up battery in the background? Trying a hard restart to see if it stops.​
 
Same here, my battery life has plummeted these past two days. The only change is that I upgraded to ios9
 
I updated to iOS 9 last night. I had my watch on for my normal day and the battery usage was the same. I usually have it on for about 12 hours and it had 60% or so. I will keep an eye on it to see if it changes.
 
Today is my first day on iOS 9 (actually, didn't install until this afternoon.) and my battery is lower than normal. Keep in mind it is 11:30pm, but normally at this time of night I am at 35-40% battery. Tonight I am at 23%.

So, still fine, but more drained than usual.
 
My battery has taken a minor hint and it acts like I don't have apps when I tell Siri to open them
 
Same issue for me - yesterday, the watch completely ran out of juice, which is only the second time that has happened since I bought the watch 5 months ago. I'm ending the day today with less than 15%. I usually have 30-40% left after a full day. The only change has been IOS 9. Disappointing and there is no way to tell which app/process is taking up most of the battery (like on the iPhone). I hope it improves with watchOS2. A hard restart didn't solve my issue.
 
Mine seems to be the same. Did not see the exact percentage but looked at the little graphic displayed when the charger kicks in and it was above 50%, closer to 60% which is average for me.

Will keep a watch on it today but it looks normal to me.
 
I've rebooted both my watch and phone and I'll wait and see what today brings. The past two days, I've ended the day with about 15% of battery, where as before that I'm in the 40s. As noted above, I've done nothing different, I have a couple of hours of exercise, and I usually hit all my goals. Nothing really out of the ordinary.
 
My battery hasn't changed at all. (ends the day with ~60% left both on iOS 8 and 9)
 
Keep in mind iOS 9/wOS1.1 has been beta tested by thousands for several months. A 2 day sample is not enough to be conclusive.
 
Updated to iOS 9 on Wednesday. Yesterday I had my watch on for approx. 18 hours. At work I used it as remote for a PowerPoint Presentations for an hour. At night I did a 50 min. exercise walk and had at the end of the day still 53% battery left. This is slightly better or about the same than with iOS 8.

What I have changed in the past and which I think improved my battery life:
- I no longer use Complications which need to update every time I just need to see the time. E.g. I removed the temperature complication. It seems it had to communicate with the phone to get updated location and weather. Especially while driving a car the watch turns on occasions and has to check the information every time.
- For information which need updating, I moved it to Glances instead. As easy and only need to update when I really want to see the temperature.

This made a noticeable improvement to my battery life.

We recently had to travel and with delays the trip took approx. 37 hours. I used the watch quite a bit with flight notification, boarding passes etc.. During a layover I did a indoor walk for 30 min. Just when I went to bed the watch had reached 2%. I was very satisfied with this performance. And how often does my watch see Berlin, Paris, New York, Miami and Orlando on one trip :)
I have the 42mm and my wife has the 38mm. She used it less (without indoor walk) and her watch made it through the trip as well.

Summary:
When comparing battery life, check which complications you have running.

However twice between June and now I had low battery while usage was low and I had no explanation (iOS 8.4). Only time will tell if iOS 9 will impact watch battery life.
 
I'm doing some tweaking if my uses today to see what's going on. I've disabled the ios9 Battery widget from my Notification Center to see if that works. If not, I'll probably unpair and re-pair.
 
A couple of days after wOS 2 and 3ed party native apps hit the store we will see a 100 of these threads.:eek:
 
I suspect this is because third-party app.

I have been using iOS 9 public beta and GM since early summer, and I have not had any battery issue on my watch, running 1.0.1.

Ever since 9/16 when the iOS 9 was officially out, my watch would drop half of the battery within 4 hours.

Mind you I have already been on iOS 9 GM for about a week and did not notice any battery issue.

So the only logical reason would be the third party apps. Lots of 3rd party apps were updated on or about 9/16 in anticipating watchOS 2, and that may be the reason they are draining the watch's battery.
 
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Mine used to have around 50% charge at the end of an 18 hour day, 30% on days when Workout app was used. Yesterday and today I got 6.5 hours from 100% charge to 0 without Workout app usage. Will try unpairing etc :(
 
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