Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Watch OS 7 Battery Life
- Thread starter Dormammu
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I called Apple today and it was a waste of time. They told me my watch (that's DRAMATICALLY WORSE) is normal @ 89% capacity after 23 months of use.
A week ago I was getting hours of additional battery life. No way I'm buying another one when they can fall off a cliff with any software update.
They told me I should be charging it twice per day.
I usually charge it fully at bedtime ~midnight. I'll put it on at 2AM or so and sleep. Rinse and repeat. My workouts are evening or as late as 9PM but the watch is dead by then.
I'm wondering if new sleep tracking is affecting it. It's fully charged when I go to sleep and ~79% most mornings when I wake. Since I never looked before I don't know how that compares but it seems like a lot for sleeping.
A week ago I was getting hours of additional battery life. No way I'm buying another one when they can fall off a cliff with any software update.
They told me I should be charging it twice per day.
I usually charge it fully at bedtime ~midnight. I'll put it on at 2AM or so and sleep. Rinse and repeat. My workouts are evening or as late as 9PM but the watch is dead by then.
I'm wondering if new sleep tracking is affecting it. It's fully charged when I go to sleep and ~79% most mornings when I wake. Since I never looked before I don't know how that compares but it seems like a lot for sleeping.
Question for the forum, if I un-pair my Series 5 and re-pair it will this cause any issues with my data subscription, and are there any steps I should do before un-pairing? I've read it has broken "Unlock Mac" connections making me hesitant to mess up my data.
Un-pairing process asks you whether you'd like to remove from or keep the data plan in the watch. If you keep there it'll be available after re-pairing has completed. There's speculation that the auto unlock feature is actually the culprit in this low battery life situation so I'd leave it off for now. Hopefully there'll be a patch quite soon... I think this problem is fairly widespread.
We tested my wife’s S4 40MM last night by leaving it off the charger overnight, it dropped 18-20% while just sitting idle. We have unpaired it and re-paired it twice. Battery health is 100%. She has a nasty scratch on her screen so we upgraded her to an S6 but how disappointing. My S4 44MM is having battery issues but no where near my wife’s, hers would barely make it through an 8 hour day.
I usually end my day with my battery on 80% but since os7 it’s been 50-60%. I hope they get this optimized soon
I usually end my day with my battery on 80% but since os7 it’s been 50-60%. I hope they get this optimized soon
Thanks, Mighuel; one question though. When you say auto unlock, are you referring to Unlock with iPhone or a different auto unlock?
Add me to the list of people plagued by terrible battery life. After updating to watchOS 7 I couldn’t even get home from work before my series 5 died without any change in usage. Gave it a few days to see if it would settle down but it never did. Did an unpair/repair this morning and restored from backup because it seems like that’s been the only way people have been resolving the issue. Probably won’t get a good grasp on whether or not it helped until I go back to work tomorrow.
I’m at 66 percent on my series 4, just wearing it like normal, no workouts or anything. I charge it to 100 before bed then leave it off the charger during the night, usually wake up with about 90%. So I’ve dropped about 23 percent doing nothing significant.
Same it’s been about an hour and a half since my last post. 73% to 57% doing nothing.
Looking over these posts briefly, it seems like most of the battery-life issues occur with series 5 and 6. I updated my series 4 watch the other day and haven't noticed a dramatic change in power consumption. Do you think this is true? It could indeed be a glitch with things like the always-on screen (on the series 5 and 6 watches), and other features not found on the series 4.
there were quite a few S4 owners, including myself affected.
The strange thing for me was that I had no issues for 5 days and then on day 6 it started ... had to unpair/pair and looking good again
After updating to watchOS 7.01 my AW5 drained virtually nothing during the last two hours. Let’s see how things work out the next days.
I have AW5 and for me what made a huge difference in watchOS 6 (haven’t upgraded yet since I am traveling) is to turn on theatre mode at night. Effectively killing the display at night that gives me more than 24 hours of battery life even with lots of activities during the day.
I had to unpair and repair my Series 4 because of battery drain and now it won't work to unlock by MBA. When I click that option in the security preferences in MacOS it just says it can't find the watch. Restarted everything. Wonderful.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251803595?login=true&page=3
follow the above, someone posted it in this thread, somewhere, I bookmarked it so can't give credit to the OP
Series 5 here. I took my watch off the charger this morning at 7am. By 5:30 it’s at 31%. Back on watchOS 6 I would probably be closer to 70% by now. It’s terrible