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Watch OS 4.2 battery drain?

AW3 LTE here; noticed significant battery drain after 4.2. Took it off the charger this morning before work at about 94%, I'm now to 40% now after a normal day's usage. Before the update, I'd expect to be around 65-75% at this time of the day based on my normal activity. Not happy with this development.

UPDATE - it appears that 4.2 may not have been the problem. I had downloaded an app to my iPad on the same day I installed 4.2 on my watch. That app auto-installed onto my phone and watch (!), and was running. Upon deleting that one app, battery life seems improved/back to normal so far.
 
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Mikeeee said:
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.
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I'm sending it in to Apple. At first I was told they needed a credit card because they would send a new watch out first and charge me for the repair cost. But it looks like they are just sending the box for me to return my watch for repair.
 
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I am getting about 12.5 hours on my S0, this seems the norm since watchos 3. You also have to account for how many notifications you get a day whether its email or any other app. I get quite a few so its a drain on my battery. 12.5 hours on a 2 year old watch is expected I would imagine with already 4 os revisions on it. The newest OS is optimized for the newest hardware. Apple always does that and whoever has the oldest tech suffers.
 
antnee said:
I am getting about 12.5 hours on my S0, this seems the norm since watchos 3. You also have to account for how many notifications you get a day whether its email or any other app. I get quite a few so its a drain on my battery. 12.5 hours on a 2 year old watch is expected I would imagine with already 4 os revisions on it. The newest OS is optimized for the newest hardware. Apple always does that and whoever has the oldest tech suffers.
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I’m on hour 12 of my day so far on my series 0 and still at 42%. This is a huge improvement for me and it has consistently been this way since 4.2, but I’m sure there are variances in our use cases.
 
I usually have about 70% left after 15 hours, with 30-60 minutes of exercise on Watch OS 4.1. Today at 10 hours with 45 minutes of exercise I'm at 85% on Watch OS 4.2.
 
HeadphoneAddict said:
I usually have about 70% left after 15 hours, with 30-60 minutes of exercise on Watch OS 4.1. Today at 10 hours with 45 minutes of exercise I'm at 85% on Watch OS 4.2.
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This boggles my mind as well. The more active I am the more battery I have at the end of the day. If I’m working sitting down all day it drains!
 
antnee said:
This boggles my mind as well. The more active I am the more battery I have at the end of the day. If I’m working sitting down all day it drains!
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So, now at 16 hours 50 minutes I'm at 74% as expected (and I had the 45 minutes of exercise, and numerous texts and notifications, but didn't use it for phone calls).
 
antnee said:
This boggles my mind as well. The more active I am the more battery I have at the end of the day. If I’m working sitting down all day it drains!
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I wonder if it’s caused by the watch face can ntinually turning on due to the small movements of your arm during the day. I feel like I burn through my battery life a lot more on days when I’m using my iPad a lot, as opposed to using my Mac or not being on the computer at all. I don’t know how much battery is used by the screen but I have to think it’s a lot, which is why they don’t have screens that stay on all the time.
 
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Ahhhh... I've posted it in other threads about my watch but I guess not in here - it's a S3 LTE 42mm. But I was getting similar battery life on Watch OS with my S2 GPS.
 
beachbum45 said:
Has anyone seen a hit in battery life after updating to the official (non-beta) 4.2?
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YES

Watch 42mm S0 worked great for a week after making the update to 4.2 with my usual battery life(~36 hours expected), then for both of the last two days burned thru' the battery such that it shutdown after just 12h.
Second day, aware, I watched the charge sink at an amazing rate, I put into airplane mode, but too late. just a time and a power zap symbol, 3/4 of the way thru my day.

As reports from MR are mixed, I charged the S0 enough to start by stopping the running things!, in case an app was guilty rather than the OS.

Via iPhone/Watch.app Notifications, turned everything OFF except messages to Mirror,
General/Background App Refresh, set everything OFF,
'threw away' many marginally useful apps, left just 2 installed and 4.7GB Available of the 5.6GB Capacity and restarted

Now my watch reports Usage 48 minutes, Standby 12 hours, 9 minutes , battery is holding at 86%

Not bad, I might upgrade my 42mm S1 now and see how that fares, and be more forensic about the battery drain
 
Hey guys, if I recall, when apps are in the dock they are running in the background, and that can run battery life down. At least on older Watch OS, when I had "find my friends" in the Watch dock it was sucking down the battery at an alarming rate.
 
Extreme Battery Drain.
Apple can go f*** itself. I won't buy another WATCH.

DO NOT UPGRADE TO WATCHOS 4.2. IT IS ****.
 
spiderman0616 said:
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.
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you could very well be right about this... i guess what was strange was the apparent 100% cpu usage after the first install. but i have had short battery life after applying updates too.

oh well... on balance the apple watch is pretty nice. i can't believe i stubbornly used a pebble time for so long!
 
I'm not very happy with Apple's response. The technician received the watch, tested it, said he couldn't replicate the problem and sent it back out to me the same day.
After setting the watch up, again, as new (not from a backup), I'm still only getting about 12-13 hours of battery.
I took it off the charger 3 hours and 17 minutes ago and I'm at 80% right now. Ridiculous!
FYI I bought this watch, brand new, in September of 2016. So it's really only 15 months old.
 
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My S0 is going in a drawer until WatchOS 4.3 - I only updated the OS because every few days watchOS 4.0 would claim that my charger cable wasn't supported because it wasn't authentic (it's the one that came with the watch!). Since then I'm lucky if my watch hasn't shut down from lack of battery before bed - previously I'd be at about 40% battery at bedtime, after wearing it for 18 hours. It starts out great, with battery only going down to 97% in the first couple of hours. Then it seems to get through battery faster and faster as the day goes on (and I'm a software developer, so it's not like I'm super active between 8am and 5pm).

Tried all the tips - turned off notifications, music player on wake screen, reinstalled from back-up, reinstalled as new watch, and nothing has improved matters. I know it's software, not the battery, since it started the day after I updated the OS

cyclotron451 said:
YES

Watch 42mm S0 worked great for a week after making the update to 4.2 with my usual battery life(~36 hours expected), then for both of the last two days burned thru' the battery such that it shutdown after just 12h.
Second day, aware, I watched the charge sink at an amazing rate, I put into airplane mode, but too late. just a time and a power zap symbol, 3/4 of the way thru my day.

As reports from MR are mixed, I charged the S0 enough to start by stopping the running things!, in case an app was guilty rather than the OS.

Via iPhone/Watch.app Notifications, turned everything OFF except messages to Mirror,
General/Background App Refresh, set everything OFF,
'threw away' many marginally useful apps, left just 2 installed and 4.7GB Available of the 5.6GB Capacity and restarted

Now my watch reports Usage 48 minutes, Standby 12 hours, 9 minutes , battery is holding at 86%

Not bad, I might upgrade my 42mm S1 now and see how that fares, and be more forensic about the battery drain
Click to expand...
 
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Yes! I have been having horrible battery issues since updating. I have a 38mm series 1 sport. I have turned brightness all the way down, removed all but one complication, and only left notifications on for a couple things that are most important to me. I pull my watch off the charger between 6:30 am and 7... my battery is down to 10% by the time I leave work at 5:30. I am so frustrated! I have to charge it when I get home if I want to use the workout app in the evening, and that drains it even worse. I hope they come out with a fix soon. I wish I had never updated it.
 
mirz2000 said:
Yes! I have been having horrible battery issues since updating. I have a 38mm series 1 sport. I have turned brightness all the way down, removed all but one complication, and only left notifications on for a couple things that are most important to me. I pull my watch off the charger between 6:30 am and 7... my battery is down to 10% by the time I leave work at 5:30. I am so frustrated! I have to charge it when I get home if I want to use the workout app in the evening, and that drains it even worse. I hope they come out with a fix soon. I wish I had never updated it.
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Same happens to my wife’s watch. Os4 definitely drains more so than any previous version.
 
I'm getting the same problem on my S0; running out of power early evening. What's odd is that it's intermittent; it happens some days but not others. I'm guessing that it must be a bug that's affecting some apps and not others.

Time to start removing them and then adding them back one at a time. If it takes a day's testing for each app, that may take a while.
 
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