Terrible battery life

[deeddawg]

About nine hours off the charger so far today, four hours of workouts as I tried three different workout types while in my fishing (pedal) kayak.

Battery at 46%, which is on par with what I would have gotten from my S4

 

[Mercenary]

Give it time. Happens every year when people get their new phones.

The issue is “Background app refresh”. New watches and a major update makes everything refresh in the background. After time background app refresh ‘learns’ what you actually use and stops refreshing. The app will still show as on but if it is of no use it will stop. And... battery life improves.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Wouldn’t say ours is bad but it seems a little worse than the AW 3 gps it replaced. But yeah it is our first day of usage. Not willing to turn off always on display. Can’t imagine hearing would use that much. Happy with the watch. Much faster and screen is much bigger.
[automerge]1569097332[/automerge]

Give it time. Happens every year when people get their new phones.

The issue is “Background app refresh”. New watches and a major update makes everything refresh in the background. After time background app refresh ‘learns’ what you actually use and stops refreshing. The app will still show as on but if it is of no use it will stop. And... battery life improves.

Agreed. This is my experience with the times I’ve reset my AW 3.

 

[Boardiesboi]

Full day with the S5 yesterday. 100% off charger in morning at 6am.
Down to 45% at bed time at 9pm.
With S4 I always only go down to 65-70% at the end of the day.

Didn’t do anything drastically different.

 

[MadCar]

Mmmm battery life is ok but not as good as my old S2 'So Far'!

Ok so I've been playing with it a little and trying a few things, normal couple of walking exercise routines at the weekend and mid brightness.

Usage - 3hrs 44Mins
Standby - 13hrs 22Mins
Battery left - 35%

Its the first full day, got a good few complications on but so far there is NO WAY this is a 2 day watch like a prior series if AOD is activated!!

Loving the AOD but if you like I do go away overnight on business without a charger I'd say you need to turn AOD off. See what tomorrow brings.

- Going to turn off the Listening complication tomorrow and see how things go on day 2.

 

[Westside guy]

Of course, bad battery life could also be a symptom of the new major WatchOS version (6) - we've certainly seen that before...

For now, I've set my Series 5 to require a tap to wake the screen. I figure that, in the past, 95% of the time when I raised my wrist it was just to see the time or my next appointment - which the always-on screen addresses.

On a side note - in the always-on low-light mode, my eyes find it much easier to quickly read the time if the watch face is analog rather than digital.

 

[dannyyankou]

About 3 hours off the charger and it’s at 87%. Huge improvement the second day.

Worth noting I didn’t do a workout with it, but I periodically checked the Yankees game on it.

 

[Mercenary]

I’ve found it takes around 2 weeks for a new watch or recently reset watch to’ settle down’ and have normal battery life

 

[wxboss67]

My SS series 4 has been off the charger since 7 too, now 11:23 and my battery is at 59% after a 100 minute workout!! Haven’t done anything else with it. Have NEVER liked the battery life and worried about “always on” because of my experience with the 4.

The battery life on my Series 4 has definitely nosedived since updating to OS 6. I hope Apple comes out with a fix for this soon or else my watch won’t make it through a typical day.

 

[pirarre]

I checked my battery again since my last post and it’s now at 25%.

I put it in theater mode until I get home. I’m gonna do a factory reset when I get home just to see if that helps.

Before I synced all my apps, battery life was good for me yesterday. So I’m thinking it may be a rogue app that’s causing my issue.

Do anyone know of a way to find out if there is an app that cause of the issue?

 

[pirarre]

About nine hours off the charger so far, four hours of workouts as I tried three different workout types while in my fishing (pedal) kayak today.

Battery at 46%, which is on par with what I would have gotten from my S4

Which watchface are you running and with complications?

 

[Pseudo-Fed]

Reported similar on another thread. Went to bed at 10:00 with 100% + 1 hour charged. With DND and theatre mode on as usual (always sleep with watch on), woke up to 92%, which is exactly what my S4 running OS5 would do. Thought "cool".

Topped it off to 100% + maybe 30 mins while I had a cigar this am. Off charger at 0800. 6:30 pm now and down to 40%. This is a very low notification day for me compared to M-F workdays. No real honeymoon time with the new device today--got that out of the way last night after picking it up.

I would normally be at about 70% after dinner right now, so that's a 30% difference. We have a very regular routine for me to check against.

Using same watch face I use, and restored from backup, but did notice "Noise" app constant listening is ON. And in fact it notified me of over 90 decibels twice earlier while riding my motorcycle. Tomorrow I will start the day at 100% and DISABLE Noise monitoring. Really hoping it's not the always on display.....

 

[Pseudo-Fed]

I restored from backup and am running same watch face and complications as on my S4 SS, OS5. I did notice today my Noise app has constant listening enabled after getting two 90+ decibel warnings while riding my motorcycle. Tomorrow I will start the day at 100% with Noise listening DISABLED. It's just this type of big brother feature that gets sneaked into a new OS and throws us off. I hope its not the always on display....

 

[Pseudo-Fed]

Apple support page states the following for the series 5. And while they can't list each setting, I don't see it say "Noise Listening Enabled".....so I am suspect. Of course it doesn't say the always on display is enabled either:

Apple Watch - Battery

Find out more about the 18-hour battery life of Apple Watch. Learn about charge time, power reserve, and other battery metrics, too.

www.apple.com

All-Day Battery Life
Up to 18 hours
All-day battery life is based on 18 hours with the following use: 90 time checks, 90 notifications, 45 minutes of app use, and a 60-minute workout with music playback from Apple Watch via Bluetooth, over the course of 18 hours. Apple Watch Series 5 (GPS) usage includes connection to iPhone via Bluetooth during the entire 18-hour test. Apple Watch Series 5 (GPS + Cellular) usage includes a total of 4 hours of LTE connection and 14 hours of connection to iPhone via Bluetooth over the course of 18 hours. Testing conducted by Apple in August 2019 using preproduction Apple Watch Series 5 (GPS) and Apple Watch Series 5 (GPS + Cellular), each paired with an iPhone; all devices tested with prerelease software. Battery life varies by use, configuration, cellular network, signal strength, and many other factors; actual results will vary.

 

[Pseudo-Fed]

Apple support page states the following for the series 5. And while they can't list each setting, I don't see it say "Noise Listening Enabled".....so I am suspect. Of course it doesn't say the always on display is enabled either:

Apple Watch - Battery

Find out more about the 18-hour battery life of Apple Watch. Learn about charge time, power reserve, and other battery metrics, too.

www.apple.com

All-Day Battery Life
Up to 18 hours
All-day battery life is based on 18 hours with the following use: 90 time checks, 90 notifications, 45 minutes of app use, and a 60-minute workout with music playback from Apple Watch via Bluetooth, over the course of 18 hours. Apple Watch Series 5 (GPS) usage includes connection to iPhone via Bluetooth during the entire 18-hour test. Apple Watch Series 5 (GPS + Cellular) usage includes a total of 4 hours of LTE connection and 14 hours of connection to iPhone via Bluetooth over the course of 18 hours. Testing conducted by Apple in August 2019 using preproduction Apple Watch Series 5 (GPS) and Apple Watch Series 5 (GPS + Cellular), each paired with an iPhone; all devices tested with prerelease software. Battery life varies by use, configuration, cellular network, signal strength, and many other factors; actual results will vary.

 

[deeddawg]

Which watchface are you running and with complications?

California with small dial, white on black, complications weather-temp, activity, MyNetDiary, workout, calendar.

Now at 21% four hours later Than previously. I’ve been messing with it a bunch though too.

We shall see. I’m not concerned at this time but will keep an eye out. I seem to remember poor battery life with new installs in the past, settling down into normalcy in a couple days.

 

[silas_2001]

I went for a mountain-bike training at 95% battery-life, and after one hour of training it has only 5% left. It is a Apple Watch Series 5 44 mm in Stainless Steel, and the cellular was not one, only bluetooth. I know you say it just have to re-index, but really, 90% in one hour?

 

[silas_2001]

I went for a mountain-bike training at 95% battery-life, and after one hour of training it has only 5% left. It is a Apple Watch Series 5 44 mm in Stainless Steel, and the cellular was not one, only bluetooth. I know you say it just have to re-index, but really, 90% in one hour?

 

[dannyyankou]

Is the OP having better luck after one full day? @Cold_Beaver

 

[ericiu2]

I just been on and off the phone with Apple Support today with the same issue! I got a titanium AW5 yesterday. I did a fresh install when I got it, put it on its charger last night when I went to bed. I got up at 6AM with 100% and didn’t do any workouts, cellular, etc. and it completely died (0%) by 2PM.

I’m *really* hoping it’s what some suggested here and an index issue? Because titaniums are close to impossible to find right now... ugh.

 

[jbachandouris]

The claim for the AW5 is 18 hours?

I’m at 36% after 12 hours. Only activated indoor run for about 20 minutes.

 

[bevsb2]

Really love the Series 5 and the always on display, but the battery life hasn't been good so far. My battery on the Series 4 was usually over 50% at night when I put it on the charger. My new watch was 100% at 6 am this morning and now at 8:30 pm is already at 20% with doing nothing special all day (no workouts). Hope this improves as the main appeal of the Series 5 for me was the always on display.

 

[jbachandouris]

36% after 13 hours. I guess I’m doing better then the rest of you. So much for 18 hour battery life.

Not restoring it. Not returning it. At most I’ll do is turn off always on.

 

[Westside guy]

Okay, so it's been 7+ hours with "tap to wake" and I'm still at 80%. Yesterday, with the watch "as is" out of the box, I'd lost 35% in 3-4 hours.

Besides changing to "tap to wake"... one other change I made late yesterday - which someone else tried to point out earlier in this thread - is disable background app refresh for most of the apps. For whatever reason, they were all turned on after I migrated from my old watch to the Series 5. Now I've turned it off for everything except Activity, Alarms, Calendar, Duo, Glympse, Reminders, and Workout. The watch face is Modular Compact (Analog) with Date, Weather/Temp, and Calendar.

Based on this extremely small sample set of exactly one watch, I'm going to go out on a limb and blame the problems many of us saw on the new complications (like Noise), plus the usual battery issues with a major WatchOS upgrade.

 

[ericg301]

how many of us set up our S5 by restoring from a previous backup, or are starting fresh?
wonder if there's some battery draining bug in the backup data.