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Watch OS 7 Battery Life

Same here. In WatchOS 7.0 my battery performance was stunning.
After the update to 7.0.1 it's been a disaster. Even after a few days (I know, indexing may last up to several days, but nevertheless). Yesterday, I simply had to charge it after ± 12h of (normal to even low) usage. Today it'll be just the same.

I'll unpair the watch and set it up from scratch. Don't worry about the data.
 
NME42 said:
Hope this thread is not dead...

Am I the only one experiencing large battery drain during workouts and listening to music/podcasts?

I am on watchOS 7.0.1 and have not unpaired/paired as I fear data loss.
Click to expand...
I confirm.
My battery drain is normal far "normal day usage" but seems to be very high during workouts.
This morning: 1h30 running (LTE, GPS, podcast) about 45% battery lost.
 
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rbart said:
seems to be very high during workouts.
This morning: 1h30 running (LTE, GPS, podcast) about 45% battery lost.
Click to expand...

Looking back to when I was closely tracking battery usage, I'd see 20-30% battery usage in a 45 minute outdoor run; LTE, GPS, and either local (lower %) or streaming music/podcast (higher %).

So 45% battery in a 1h30m outdoor workout doesn't seem out of the ordinary.

BTW - my numbers above were for watchOS6 on my Series5 watch last year. Haven't tracked my S6 yet.
 
I feel I have better life than I did with my S5. AOD is always on. The only thing different with my usage is that I'm not using Apple Pay 1-2 times a day.
 
iOnAsJ said:
Same here. In WatchOS 7.0 my battery performance was stunning.
After the update to 7.0.1 it's been a disaster. Even after a few days (I know, indexing may last up to several days, but nevertheless). Yesterday, I simply had to charge it after ± 12h of (normal to even low) usage. Today it'll be just the same.

I'll unpair the watch and set it up from scratch. Don't worry about the data.
Click to expand...

This is the reason I have yet to install the 7.0.1 update, the battery life on my S5 on watchOS 7 has been just as good as watchOS 6 and I don't want to fix something that isn't broken.
 
rbart said:
For me, it seems higher than WatchOS 6
Click to expand...

Yesterday I did my usual Monday morning run. Always do the same track and always listen to a podcast. Always start with almost fully charged AW5. Always cellular off. One hour.

With watchOS 6 I came back with around 80% battery left. With watchOS 7 I came back with 65%. So more than 50% more consumption per hour.

I am not a bad runner and I could not do a marathon anymore tracked with my AW5. Really bad. My estimate was that a charge can do 5-6 hours, now we are down to 3-4 (optimistic, more 3 than 4).
 
Last edited:
NME42 said:
Yesterday I did my usual Monday morning run. Always do the same track and always listen to a podcast. Always start with almost fully charged AW5. Always cellular off. One hour.

With watchOS 6 I came back with around 80% battery left. With watchOS 7 I came back with 65%. So more than 50% more consumption per hour.

I am not a bad runner and I could not do a marathon anymore tracked with my AW5. Really bad. My estimate was that a charge can do 5-6 hours, now we are down to 3-4 (optimistic, more 3 than 4).
Click to expand...
do the unpair/repair ... unpairing backs up your watch data to the phone, re=pair from backup puts it back. since I've done that my battery life is back to previous levels
 
jz0309 said:
do the unpair/repair ... unpairing backs up your watch data to the phone, re=pair from backup puts it back. since I've done that my battery life is back to previous levels
Click to expand...

No. I will wait for the next updates.
Last time I did this unpair procedure it was a mess. My workout app lost configuration, my podcast app was blank, etc
 
NME42 said:
No. I will wait for the next updates.
Last time I did this unpair procedure it was a mess. My workout app lost configuration, my podcast app was blank, etc
Click to expand...
Ok, that’s fine and entirely up to you.
You should strongly consider not to be an early adaptor of OS upgrades
 
rbart said:
I confirm.
My battery drain is normal far "normal day usage" but seems to be very high during workouts.
This morning: 1h30 running (LTE, GPS, podcast) about 45% battery lost.
Click to expand...

One question as I have a suspicion: are you running with a heart rate strap paired?

I ask because I have seen weird behavior with watchOS 7 and my external heart rate straps. I am quite sure in watchOS 6 my monitors were connected when I checked in Bluetooth settings in the watch. With watchOS 7 whenever I go back and check, they are both disconnected and it takes a while to reconnect the one that I am wearing.

Seen such battery killing behavior in the past on my Garmin watches. With a slight bug in the searching and pairing procedure a bluetooth stack can really be a big hit on battery life. Would also explain why I am seeing to much battery drain during strength workouts where I never wear a strap, just using the optical HR. Maybe the watch is searching for my straps then. Will check this out tomorrow with Bluetooth disabled on the watch.
 
NME42 said:
Yesterday I did my usual Monday morning run. Always do the same track and always listen to a podcast. Always start with almost fully charged AW5. Always cellular off. One hour.

With watchOS 6 I came back with around 80% battery left. With watchOS 7 I came back with 65%. So more than 50% more consumption per hour.

I am not a bad runner and I could not do a marathon anymore tracked with my AW5. Really bad. My estimate was that a charge can do 5-6 hours, now we are down to 3-4 (optimistic, more 3 than 4).
Click to expand...

I rxd my S6 yesterday afternoon so today was first opportunity for a run. I'm a slow "grand-masters runner" with no interest in a third full marathon, so with that in mind...

47 minute run, GPS & LTE on, playing locally-stored podcast/music, 20% battery reduction. On the low end of what I'd see in similar circumstances with my S5 on watchOS6.
 
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MaciekP said:
Series 5. installed watchos 7 on day 1. Later the update to 7.01. It is a week now after the update and at the end of day i have around 20-30% battery left. On watch os 6 and earier releases i had around 63-67% battery left when going to sleep. I lost around 30% of battery capacity on average on watchos 7 update. Very unhappy
Click to expand...
I did a full AW 5 reset and paired it again with iphone as a new watch. It look a while to fully synchronise Both devices. After that i have again >60% of battery left at the end of day, so it is a fix that works!
 
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NME42 said:
One question as I have a suspicion: are you running with a heart rate strap paired?

I ask because I have seen weird behavior with watchOS 7 and my external heart rate straps. I am quite sure in watchOS 6 my monitors were connected when I checked in Bluetooth settings in the watch. With watchOS 7 whenever I go back and check, they are both disconnected and it takes a while to reconnect the one that I am wearing.

Seen such battery killing behavior in the past on my Garmin watches. With a slight bug in the searching and pairing procedure a bluetooth stack can really be a big hit on battery life. Would also explain why I am seeing to much battery drain during strength workouts where I never wear a strap, just using the optical HR. Maybe the watch is searching for my straps then. Will check this out tomorrow with Bluetooth disabled on the watch.
Click to expand...
No, I just use my watch and a BT headset
 
Best day for me since doing a fresh re-pair on 7.0.1.

7.5 hours of standby. 80% battery left. 2.7%/hr.

No 3rd party apps installed. All features enabled except sleep. Display brightness at lowest setting.
 
Battery Grapher shows accuracy as good. Everything still enabled with WaterMinder sending reminders and Watch Feeds sending me notifications when MR post a new article.
 

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My watch crashes once every 2 hours now. literally PATHETIC of apple to release such garbage iOS.
 
FWIW, anyone with flaky battery life should check their Background App Refresh on their Apple Watch - my update to 7.0 or 7.01 changed them all to ON, so I manually switched about half of them back off agian.
 
NME42 said:
Will check this out tomorrow with Bluetooth disabled on the watch.
Click to expand...

Switched off Bluetooth on my AW and did a 40min strength workout. Still about 10% battery drain so Bluetooth does not seem to be the issue.

Maybe the problems with Apple Health cause the drain?
 
NME42 said:
No. I will wait for the next updates.
Last time I did this unpair procedure it was a mess. My workout app lost configuration, my podcast app was blank, etc
Click to expand...
Same here.
What a mess. Battery life was tremendous with OS7, now it's complete rubbish. Why on earth do they release that?
 
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S5 on 7.01 here used to have about 50% left almost every day, but now its down to 35% on most days. Significant drop with no change of usage and I haven't touched any settings either, quite disappointed.

Wasn't any better on 7.0 either the updated hasn't made it worse or better for me but something has change and not for the better.
 
Does anyone (beta testers?) have a clue when the next update might follow?
Perhaps it might solve the draining issues some of us experience.
 
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