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Watch OS 4.2 battery drain?
- Thread starter beachbum45
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Most of my notifications are turned off. My wife has notifications on and her battery life is significantly worse than mine. I end the day at 83%+ and she'll end the day at 30% (she does have the 38mm and I have the 42mm).
I do have just about the same Notifications as you turned on. I also have notifications from Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Hangouts.
I charge my watch during dinner and wear it the rest of the time. I do have it on the Theater mode when I sleep and I have DND on typically from 10:45 PM to 6:30 AM.
I have around 50% battery left when I put it on the charger.
My wife uses her watch heavily - so I'm impressed with her battery life too. She does DND but doesn't turn on theater mode.
Love your avitar - one of my favorite TV shows ever!
(That and Munsters)
My S0 battery was much better on Watch OS 3. I only got it in September of 2016 so it's not really that old.
Yesterday I unpaired it, reset all content and set it up as a new watch instead of restoring a backup.
I took it off the charger around 7:20 this morning. It's now 3:12 PM and it's at 39% This is unacceptable to me. I don't know what I can do though. I'll give it a day or 2 to see. I didn't get Apple Care but I got SquareTrade protection. I doubt they cover things like battery life.
Yesterday I unpaired it, reset all content and set it up as a new watch instead of restoring a backup.
I took it off the charger around 7:20 this morning. It's now 3:12 PM and it's at 39% This is unacceptable to me. I don't know what I can do though. I'll give it a day or 2 to see. I didn't get Apple Care but I got SquareTrade protection. I doubt they cover things like battery life.
That's about the change in battery life that I've seen as well, but I don't know if I noticed any change in speed (better or worse). I just did a hard reset so I'll see if that fixes it like it did when I paired with IPX for the first time.
If not - I guess turning off wifi is always something to try, as some suggested
I chatted with Apple Support today. They ran diagnostics on my watch and saw no problems with anything, including the battery.
As a test I wanted to see when the watch would die. It took about 12.5 hours until it shut off. That seems really very bad to me.
As a test I wanted to see when the watch would die. It took about 12.5 hours until it shut off. That seems really very bad to me.
I tried a bunch of things to see if I could improve my battery. Today I tried unpairing and then re-pairing the watch. This worked. The battery is back to performing very well.
I am still rocking a 42mm Series 0 Apple Watch that I got the day they came out at launch. I never had an issue with it making it through the day on a charge, even after long workouts, until watchOS 4.0 and 4.1. With those two releases, I was getting the power reserve notification before bed time. If I walked or biked for an hour while running the workout app, I would have to put it on the charger afterwards just to get through the rest of the day.
With watchOS 4.2, my battery life seems to be back to normal again, and first and third party apps are launching faster than they ever have before. I know this is not my imagination, because Shazam and Nest only launched about 50% of the time for me and would crash the other 50% of the time. Now they launch in just a few seconds with no crashing.
Yesterday, just as an experiment, I launched all the apps that I have as favorites in my dock (just to make sure they were loaded up in RAM) in the morning, used my watch for as many things as I could think of during the day, and didn’t put it on the charger at any point for a top off. I wore it from 7 am until about 12:30 am that night, and when I went to bed it was at 25%.
This was unheard of for the first two version of watchOS 4 for me, and it’s actually better than I was getting in watchOS 3 as well.
EDIT: Forgot to mention notifications—I get them from Outlook and Mail, iMessage, Yahoo Fantasy Football, Pocket Cast, and several other apps. I have not turned anything off or done anything special to preserve battery.
With watchOS 4.2, my battery life seems to be back to normal again, and first and third party apps are launching faster than they ever have before. I know this is not my imagination, because Shazam and Nest only launched about 50% of the time for me and would crash the other 50% of the time. Now they launch in just a few seconds with no crashing.
Yesterday, just as an experiment, I launched all the apps that I have as favorites in my dock (just to make sure they were loaded up in RAM) in the morning, used my watch for as many things as I could think of during the day, and didn’t put it on the charger at any point for a top off. I wore it from 7 am until about 12:30 am that night, and when I went to bed it was at 25%.
This was unheard of for the first two version of watchOS 4 for me, and it’s actually better than I was getting in watchOS 3 as well.
EDIT: Forgot to mention notifications—I get them from Outlook and Mail, iMessage, Yahoo Fantasy Football, Pocket Cast, and several other apps. I have not turned anything off or done anything special to preserve battery.
That's really cool - the Series 0 watch was released April 2015. For the battery to last that long and for it to still be usable is impressive. Thanks for the post!
I did the same and 2 days in a row the performance has improved. I still don't know why this needed to be done, but I guess as long as there's a solution I'm content (until the next update...)
i don't know why this works either, but i had the same problem with an s0 and 4.1 - even though it was erased and being set up for the first time by me, the battery life was terrible - 4h. apple support told me to unpair and repair again, and not restore from backup, and that seems to have worked.
since i had just done exactly the same thing not 24 hours before, it's hard to understand why this would fix anything.
this is encouraging - on 4.1 both of my s0 watches seem to exhibit wildy varying battery life from day to day. maybe they fixed something in 4.2.
since i had just done exactly the same thing not 24 hours before, it's hard to understand why this would fix anything.
this is encouraging - on 4.1 both of my s0 watches seem to exhibit wildy varying battery life from day to day. maybe they fixed something in 4.2.
I’ve had to do the unpair/repair dance a couple of times after updates and I stopped doing it because I started noticing that battery drain is almost always worse right after an OS update. For me it usually stabilizes a day or two later. If it doesn’t, then I try an unpair/repair. It’s a pain, but usually worth the trouble.
Series 1 here.
I'd say battery life improved since watchOS 4 first came out back in September. The Watch sometimes feels slower, I wouldn't say too much but I can notice lags in animations. Still happy with it though, not willing to buy a series 3 just for a cpu upgrade
I'd say battery life improved since watchOS 4 first came out back in September. The Watch sometimes feels slower, I wouldn't say too much but I can notice lags in animations. Still happy with it though, not willing to buy a series 3 just for a cpu upgrade
4.2 also botched my battery life. I un-paired and set up as new. Took my Watch out of the charger at 8AM and still rocking 99% now at 10AM (my time). Looks like battery life is back to it's normal self again. S0 SS model.
I'm just not as lucky. I did unpair and erase and set up as a new watch a few days ago and I'm still getting just 12-13 hours of battery life. I turned of Background App Refresh completely too.
Apple's only advice was to follow the battery-saving techniques on the support site. Which is basically don't turn bluetooth off and manage notification settings.
This watch has gone from something I loved to an annoyance.
I contacted Apple Support again and spoke with an agent. They are going to send me a new watch and I will return the old one for evaluation, they I will be charged whatever it would have cost to repair it.
I have SquareTrade coverage on the watch so I should only end up paying the $39 deductible.
I have SquareTrade coverage on the watch so I should only end up paying the $39 deductible.
I'd add doing a "hard reset" of the watch as well. This usually helps clear up the battery drain.
That's ridiculous. Apple should either fix it or replace it. I'm getting 2 days battery life. I'm not using any battery saving techniques. Your watch definitely has a problem.