First of all let say I’ve used Apple Watches since the very first one came out and I never had to worry about battery life on any of them… even my series 5, when it got to 79% overall battery capacity after 2 years, would still last me a whole day and I never had to worry or think about it. I’ve also used optimized charging since it was introduced on the watch and it always worked fine, pausing my watch on 80% and then charging to 100% before I took it off the charger. No problem.
How watchOS 10 introduced optimized charge limit, the feature that sometimes decides to stop your watch charging at 80%, and I hate it so much. I tried trusting Apple and just letting it do its thing but when I start my day on 80%, let’s say at like 9 AM, by 9 PM my watch (series 8, only 10 months old) is down to like 30%. And this is on 100% battery health still! Last week was the first time in history I’ve ever seen my watch go into low power mode because it was under 20% by 10:30 PM, and my day wasn’t done yet.
So you say, “what’s the problem, just tap the charge ring and tell it to charge to full”. And I do that in the morning now when the feature kicks in, but the problem is that every time you do that it turns off battery optimization completely in the settings, and not just until tomorrow but ENTIRELY OFF. So then if you still want the normal optimization to still work you have to dig into your settings and turn it on again every day, which is annoying as hell.
On Apple Watch 9 and Ultra they actually give you a separate setting to turn charge limit off while keeping optimization on, but on series 8 and earlier they don’t give you that option— it’s all or nothing. So they basically force you to use this new feature even if you don’t like it, which sucks because like I said, battery optimization worked absolutely fine on my watches before. Why can’t it be optional on series 8 also? Suddenly I have to argue with my watch every day just to charge it to a decent percentage before using it in the morning!
Incidentally, I think this kind of feature makes no sense for Apple Watch anyway. This is a device you’re supposed to be using and wearing all day long and unlike a phone, you can’t easily charge it during the day when you’re out and about or driving. So starting the day on 80% makes no sense. A feature that’s supposed to help preserve your battery life by forcing you to use your device as if the battery on it is already depleted by 20% makes absolutely no sense to me. What’s the point of preserving your battery health by pretending it already sucks??
How watchOS 10 introduced optimized charge limit, the feature that sometimes decides to stop your watch charging at 80%, and I hate it so much. I tried trusting Apple and just letting it do its thing but when I start my day on 80%, let’s say at like 9 AM, by 9 PM my watch (series 8, only 10 months old) is down to like 30%. And this is on 100% battery health still! Last week was the first time in history I’ve ever seen my watch go into low power mode because it was under 20% by 10:30 PM, and my day wasn’t done yet.
So you say, “what’s the problem, just tap the charge ring and tell it to charge to full”. And I do that in the morning now when the feature kicks in, but the problem is that every time you do that it turns off battery optimization completely in the settings, and not just until tomorrow but ENTIRELY OFF. So then if you still want the normal optimization to still work you have to dig into your settings and turn it on again every day, which is annoying as hell.
On Apple Watch 9 and Ultra they actually give you a separate setting to turn charge limit off while keeping optimization on, but on series 8 and earlier they don’t give you that option— it’s all or nothing. So they basically force you to use this new feature even if you don’t like it, which sucks because like I said, battery optimization worked absolutely fine on my watches before. Why can’t it be optional on series 8 also? Suddenly I have to argue with my watch every day just to charge it to a decent percentage before using it in the morning!
Incidentally, I think this kind of feature makes no sense for Apple Watch anyway. This is a device you’re supposed to be using and wearing all day long and unlike a phone, you can’t easily charge it during the day when you’re out and about or driving. So starting the day on 80% makes no sense. A feature that’s supposed to help preserve your battery life by forcing you to use your device as if the battery on it is already depleted by 20% makes absolutely no sense to me. What’s the point of preserving your battery health by pretending it already sucks??
