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watchOS 4 beta 2 Battery Life

I

iMel

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 10, 2013
61
19
Los Angeles, CA
Battery life on my Series 0 has taken a HUGE hit since updating to Beta 2. (Not complaining; I know Beta Life is about living dangerously.) In my 40 minute commute to work, my battery plunged from 99% to 83%

Any of you guys figure out if it's a specific app or function that's killing it? I'm trying to uninstall any unimportant third-party apps to see if that's the culprit.

During my commutes, I use Apple Maps (iOS 11) on my phone but have turn-by-turn notifications disabled on the watch. I also had Overcast running in the foreground.
 
Same here. I don't run any third party apps. I'm considering repairing the watch but that's a pain.
 
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I can say personally that by doing a re-pairing process, my huge battery draining on beta 2 has now ceased to be, is no more, disappeared, is dead, it expired.
 
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I’ve noted a huge change in power drain when comparing b1 to b2.

Today I was pretty much out of power by 1pm and that’s with no usage other than being on my wrist whilst I sat still.
 
KrisLord said:
I’ve noted a huge change in power drain when comparing b1 to b2.

Today I was pretty much out of power by 1pm and that’s with no usage other than being on my wrist whilst I sat still.
Click to expand...

Further to my post an hour ago,

My watch had been on its charger and was now back at 100%.

Since then it’s only dropped 4% in an hour so perhaps some background process has finally finished.

The only other minor things I changed (but I did this at about 11am today) was to remove excess Watch faces (including the toy story faces and the Siri face) and switch the side button to show favourite apps rather than recent. I’ve no idea I’d these changes had any impact on battery life.
 
I can confirm repairing works. My battery life was at 50% within 5 hours and now it’s back to normal.
 
Yup, re-pairing fixed the beta 2 battery issue!

(Still not as good as watchOS 3 but of course, that was expected)
 
Last edited:
I was having similar problems on my series 0, and on reddit someone discovered this and it seems to have fixed the battery issues:

Right after updating to watchOS 4 b2, my battery life was pretty crappy. I was getting maybe 5-6 hours. Did a clean install, didn't seem to help much, battery seemed to still be depleting quickly but I found a new feature setting - Detect Gym Equipment - that was turned on by default. It's in the watch app on the phone under the Workout setting.

Turned that off and battery seems back to normal now, at 87% after 6 hours off the charger.

Update: about 9 hours now off charger and at 75%
 
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WaterOz said:
I was having similar problems on my series 0, and on reddit someone discovered this and it seems to have fixed the battery issues:

Right after updating to watchOS 4 b2, my battery life was pretty crappy. I was getting maybe 5-6 hours. Did a clean install, didn't seem to help much, battery seemed to still be depleting quickly but I found a new feature setting - Detect Gym Equipment - that was turned on by default. It's in the watch app on the phone under the Workout setting.

Turned that off and battery seems back to normal now, at 87% after 6 hours off the charger.

Update: about 9 hours now off charger and at 75%
Click to expand...

Thanks for this!!
 
WaterOz said:
I was having similar problems on my series 0, and on reddit someone discovered this and it seems to have fixed the battery issues:

Right after updating to watchOS 4 b2, my battery life was pretty crappy. I was getting maybe 5-6 hours. Did a clean install, didn't seem to help much, battery seemed to still be depleting quickly but I found a new feature setting - Detect Gym Equipment - that was turned on by default. It's in the watch app on the phone under the Workout setting.

Turned that off and battery seems back to normal now, at 87% after 6 hours off the charger.

Update: about 9 hours now off charger and at 75%
Click to expand...

Dude, you’re beautiful! Thanks!
 
WaterOz said:
I was having similar problems on my series 0, and on reddit someone discovered this and it seems to have fixed the battery issues:

Right after updating to watchOS 4 b2, my battery life was pretty crappy. I was getting maybe 5-6 hours. Did a clean install, didn't seem to help much, battery seemed to still be depleting quickly but I found a new feature setting - Detect Gym Equipment - that was turned on by default. It's in the watch app on the phone under the Workout setting.

Turned that off and battery seems back to normal now, at 87% after 6 hours off the charger.

Update: about 9 hours now off charger and at 75%
Click to expand...


Thank You!
 
WaterOz said:
I was having similar problems on my series 0, and on reddit someone discovered this and it seems to have fixed the battery issues:

Right after updating to watchOS 4 b2, my battery life was pretty crappy. I was getting maybe 5-6 hours. Did a clean install, didn't seem to help much, battery seemed to still be depleting quickly but I found a new feature setting - Detect Gym Equipment - that was turned on by default. It's in the watch app on the phone under the Workout setting.

Turned that off and battery seems back to normal now, at 87% after 6 hours off the charger.

Update: about 9 hours now off charger and at 75%
Click to expand...

Thanks that reddit for us...HUGE difference! Battery life back to normal! :)
 
I have actually been getting much better battery life with b2 than I was with b1, but I too had the “detect gym equipment” turned on by default. Turning that off should help even more :)
 
My battery life isn’t great. Only thing I noticed was that my iPhone has a permanent geofenced location arrow at the top of my screen, settings says that it is Apple Watch face that is using it, it never goes away
 
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kendo88 said:
My battery life isn’t great. Only thing I noticed was that my iPhone has a permanent geofenced location arrow at the top of my screen, settings says that it is Apple Watch face that is using it, it never goes away
Click to expand...

Have you tried repairing as new and turning off the gym detect ?
 
I think resetting sync data (followed by unpair/re-pair) has fixed it. Will confirm tomorrow!

I had unpaired and repaired yesterday, tried the gym fix, tried turning off location for some apps etc....
 
so is the battery life still not great for you guys on beta 2 or has the thing people suggested to do helped with the battery problem?
 
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