WatchOS 9 poor battery

[Noben]

My theory is that the battery degradation is related to Homekit or something else in my home that is connected to Wifi or my Apple ID. I use my watch the same way when I'm at work as at home. But as you can see from the graphs below, I now have significantly worse battery life at home with 9.1 (the latter part of the graph) But I see a clear change in the battery curve when I got home.

For many years, I have experienced that my iPad (which is only used at home) has short battery life, but since it is plugged into power all the time, this has not affected me. However, I have previously experienced that as soon as I take my iPad outside the home, my iPadsbattery life is much better, and I'm under the impression that this has to do with Homekit. See https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/66763. Have been in contact with Apple about this several years ago but without getting any help)

I can live with bad battery live on my iPad, but if this now spreads to my Apple Watch, I'll be really disappointed :-(


Do any of you who have bad battery life on your Apple Watch, use homekit and have you noticed any of this?

Anyone brave enough to update to the public beta of 9.2?

 

[uller6]

Upgrade my first generation SE to Watch OS 9. Battery is better than it was on OS 8 - I end the day with between 70-75% battery life now, when OS 8 would leave me with 50-60% at the end of the day. In my case it's a big improvement.

 

[Noben]

Since the battery life on my watch was so incredibly bad, there were only two options left. Try upgrading to the public beta version of 9.2 or try unpair and repair the watch. Since it is not possible to roll back a watchOS version, I chose the latter option. And believe it or not, it looks like it actually worked

During one night's sleep (about 8h) the watch went from 100->48% before the repair. Now, after repair, it's back to 100->88%. A massive 400% difference!

I hope the rest of you have the same luck!

 

[mkstewartesq@co]

Since the battery life on my watch was so incredibly bad, there were only two options left. Try upgrading to the public beta version of 9.2 or try unpair and repair the watch. Since it is not possible to roll back a watchOS version, I chose the latter option. And believe it or not, it looks like it actually worked

During one night's sleep (about 8h) the watch went from 100->48% before the repair. Now, after repair, it's back to 100->88%. A massive 400% difference!

View attachment 2104346

I hope the rest of you have the same luck!

No such luck for me. I unpaired and repaired yesterday and have force restarted the watch numerous times. Woke up this morning with 100% charge and was down to 75% about an hour and 15 minutes later. Now, even on low power mode it seems to be dropping fairly rapidly.

 

[mkstewartesq@co]

OK, so I have unpaired and repaired multiple times, force rebooted the watch multiple times, turned off Siri because it seemed to be endlessly trying to download voices etc. Started this morning at 100%, put it into low power mode, and after a one hour and 45 minute walk, I’ve lost 35% of the battery. Again, this is with low power mode engaged.

Does anyone have any other suggestions? Is it possible to roll back the software to 9.0 on the watch?

 

[rain111]

I thought I was the only one who noticed this power drain issue on the 9.1, 9.0 was fine, but damn, this is bad.

I already did a few unpairing, pairing, and force reset... you name it, but with no luck in improving the battery life, before, I'll get a full day's charge with a workout and still have around 30-40% left, now barely half a day and I'll have 10%.

 

[tivoboy]

After having done an UN-pair and re-pair with the Ultar, 9.1 seems to have settled in a bit and moved nearly back to what I was experiencing with 9.0.2.. I just did a 12 mile hike up in Yosemite over the weekend (actually did about 25 miles overall but this one was a full 12 mile RT in the backcountry) And the AWU did quite well, using about 18% over nearly SIX hours, tracking GPS, route, waypoints tracking, HR of course about 20 O2 readings (noticed something new on the O2 readings this trip where there is a caveate/note that “this reading was taken at a higher altitude environment” so to act as a caveat for maybe when it indicates 88% or Something else. I think this is a 9.0 difference.

ONE POINT I’LL note for others. I have found that when UN-pairing and re-pairing, even though I’m restoring from a specific backup, it’s either 9.0 or AWU that is ADDING the “your location” weather location BACK into the weather app both on the WATCH and the PHONE. I have ALWAYS had this location removed or turned off, so as not to allow LOCATION SERVICES to constantly be checking for location, using GPS to do more local accurate weather updates. Historically, this has always hit the GPS sometimes hard and frequently, but I have ALWAYS had this location based weather location turned OFF and the restore of the WATCH is ADDING it back to the watch AND the PHONE without my asking or confirming, and I think some of my initial battery issues with 9.x were because this location GPS query, often was impacting both watch and phone.

So, for anyone who historically did NOT use that weather setting, either on phone or watch, take a look at that because that WILL certainly pull more battery to get GPS location for updating the weather app on the watch or the phone.

 

[tivoboy]

Quick note update about what is backed up.. historically, all health data is backed up/sync’d to the iphone that the watch is paired to. But, I found that with the AWU (and probably AW 8) the FIVE DAYS of data sampling required for the temperature sensor to be available in Health is NOT BACKED UP. so, if you UN-pair and re-pair a watch, expect to have to go through another five days of sleep tracking before the Temperature sensor delta readings are available again.

 

[rain111]

Update since my last post.

Well, I don't know what I did or happened, but after all the pairing and unpairing and giving up in the end, I noticed yesterday my watch is back to its normal battery drain, getting around 30-40% by end of the day like I used to get.

I am confused as to what fixed it honestly.

 

[Eliottjames]

Same for me! I’ve changed nothing, but in the last couple of days all seems back to normal. Currently sitting at 67% after taking it off charge early this morning.

 

[poocat]

9.1 seems to fix this for me, YMMV.

 

[Eliottjames]

Same for me! I’ve changed nothing, but in the last couple of days all seems back to normal. Currently sitting at 67% after taking it off charge early this morning.

Seems like I spoke too soon, battery back to dying at around 2pm, no change in usage whatsoever… Anyone else seeing this?

 

[poocat]

Same, mine died last night. Only differences were a long (1.5 hour) workout while on cellular, but that shouldn't kill the battery (it's something I do 3x/week, and hasn't been hurting battery life as of 9.1).

 

[KOTN91]

The battery on the S7 has always been terrible. For me it is noticeably worse than the S3

 

[poocat]

Mine back to normal after one day of burning out at 7pm. Maybe a bug around activity? I’ll keep an eye on behavior