Terrible battery life

[MacDevil7334]

How is the battery now for the Apple Watch 5 compared to Apple Watch 4?

I have only had my S5 since Friday so I am still getting familiar with it. I also bought it used and don’t know how many cycles the battery had on it already. But I’m seeing roughly 5-10% less battery remaining at the end of the day with the S5 compared to the S4 it replaced. With my S4, I would usually end the day with around 50-59% battery remaining. On my S5, I have ended every day so far around 45%. These stats include a 30-45 min workout each day.

It’s not a huge drop in battery life on the S5. But it is noticeable. I think it’s worth the trade off for the benefit of the always on display. I still have more than enough battery to make it though the day.

 

[bpritchett]

Do you have the 40mm or the 44mm?
i have the series 4 40mm SS and I am losing about 3-4% per hour. I used to only lose 2-3% so something is a little wrong.

I have the 44mm

 

[DontGetTheCheese]

I have only had my S5 since Friday so I am still getting familiar with it. I also bought it used and don’t know how many cycles the battery had on it already. But I’m seeing roughly 5-10% less battery remaining at the end of the day with the S5 compared to the S4 it replaced. With my S4, I would usually end the day with around 50-59% battery remaining. On my S5, I have ended every day so far around 45%. These stats include a 30-45 min workout each day.

For me, 10% pretty much guaranteed a long charge every couple of nights, instead of being able to go until a long workout with just quick charges while I showered (basically once/week vs 3 or 4 times/week) which I could do on the S4. That 10% was enough to bonk the watch for the way I used it.

If you are using the watch like a phone then it doesn't matter, but if you are integrating it into any kind of significant training program, it's not up to the task, especially with the lousy GPS that I experienced. Of course, YMMV.

There are two fundamental problems here: charging time and the amount of time you get on a 100% charge. Neither of these are good enough on the S5 but they were just good enough on the S4. They need to either reduce the charge time or increase the battery life although both is really what should happen.

 

[Ian Price]

Been reading this thread with interest, I’m on a S4 44mm GPS watch, when I first got the watch at Xmas I would charge on a night when watching TV and would take off charge at say 9pm and I could get to the next night with around 40% ish remaining that was with everything left on as it was and a 45 minute run during the day. I decided to turn off hey Siri and raise to wake as just wasn’t necessary and was getting to 50% figures left every day and I even managed to get from 9pm Monday to 9pm Wednesday with 10% left which I was very happy with including a run each day. Then with no changes whatsoever last few days waking up with the watch at 77/78% when sleeping in theatre mode and then down to 38% at 6pm with the same usage. Was reading this thread last night and switched a few more background refreshing apps off and one or two notifications, switched the watch off and back on again and at the time of writing went from 100% at 10pm to 91% at 8am.

I really don’t mind charging my watch every day, it’s what I expected even after going to Apple following a Garmin FR235 which was twice a week but what frustrates me is the inconsistency in battery usage under very consistent conditions. My wife got the S5 40mm at Xmas and won’t have any conversations about percentages lol but she charges her watch overnight putting it on at about 7am and it lasts until she goes to bed around 10pm / 11pm every night and that can include anything from 0 mins to 60 mins of workout app usage. She doesn’t fiddle with devices at all so her watch will have all stock features on.

 

[Ian Price]

Update to this (if anyone is interested ?), watch off charge since 10pm (ish) last night, slept with it in theatre mode, done 69 minute run with HRM and GPS on, 11 minute call and 5 minute call on speaker and battery at 75%. This is what I’d been getting since Xmas until the last few days, odd really. Will update again later tonight.

 

[buzz-dee81]

sorry for the rather lengthy post....
here’s my experience regarding the battery life of my AW4 44mm SS LTE:

before watchOS 6, my watch sat around 45% by the end of a regular day of usage or aprox. 30% if an hour of workout was done also.

After the upgrade to watchOS 6 my battery life went crazy. I’d take the watch of the charger at 6:30AM and the watch would shut off with the battery completely drained by 2:30pm in the best case. Worst case I experienced was 6:30 to noon witch just little usage of the watch.

I tried all the hints one can find on the web. From restarting watch and phone, recoupling the watch, factory reset and set up as new, disabling LTE, background activities, removing the eSIM altogether. Nothing gave any improvement on the matter.

I opened a case with Apple support back in December. Had to install some kind of profile on the watch to let Apple collect debug data of the watch. Haven’t got any reaction from them since other than they’re still evaluating my data.

last week I realized that my 2009 MacBook Pro was not syncing several iCloud services anymore, like safari bookmarks, notes and reminders. That’s due to the fact that the MacBooks latest officially supported MacOS is 10.11 El Capitan. Apple won’t let me upgrade to a later OS. But that is required for all the syncing to happen.

After doing some research I found a software called “Catalina Patcher”

macOS Catalina Patcher

This software gets the latest MacOS running on officially unsupported machines.

After finishing my upgrade and logging into my iCloud on the MacBook, my iOS devices (iPad and iPhone) required me to reenter my iCloud credentials and then showed a screen which said something like “iCloud settings are being updated...”
I let it finish which took quite a while, then went to bed leaving my dead watch on the charger.

The next day I put my watch on at 7 in the morning. After a full day of usage without working out I had 38% of charge left at 11pm.
An hour of workout included the next day gave me 12% remaining battery after wearing it for 17hours.
That was last Friday and I haven’t had the watch die a single day since. Today I took it off the charger at 0645AM and I’m at 73% at 1pm.

I’m still holding my breath if this situation will be lasting but my confidence is growing each day.

so for me it seems that my battery drain problem was created by some sort of iCloud server sync setting being outside the normal range.

 

[kitenski]

What Garmin did you have? How would you compare them?

I've had a Garmin 735 that was flawless, but didn't have a barometer. I then had issues with both a 935 and a 945. The 935 got returned twice for a faulty barometer and twice for a cracked hrm screen. I then got the 945 and the hrm on that also cracked.

So that's when I decided to try something new!

I've been putting my various thoughts into my blog here:

Moving from Garmin to Apple Watch

I've been using Garmin watches for triathlon and training for a number of years. I started with the Forerunner 735 which was great and had no issues at all. My issues started when I upgrade to a

greghilton.co.uk

and then some other more recent articles: https://greghilton.co.uk/category/apple-watch/

 

[Ian Price]

I've had a Garmin 735 that was flawless, but didn't have a barometer. I then had issues with both a 935 and a 945. The 935 got returned twice for a faulty barometer and twice for a cracked hrm screen. I then got the 945 and the hrm on that also cracked.

So that's when I decided to try something new!

I've been putting my various thoughts into my blog here:

Moving from Garmin to Apple Watch

I've been using Garmin watches for triathlon and training for a number of years. I started with the Forerunner 735 which was great and had no issues at all. My issues started when I upgrade to a

greghilton.co.uk

and then some other more recent articles: https://greghilton.co.uk/category/apple-watch/

I loved my Garmin FR235 and had it for three years, I made the switch to Apple basically so I could take calls and notifications whilst out running, so I could change my playlists and podcasts when out running and basically more interaction with my phone. The sacrifice was the battery / charging but am not too fussed about that, blog is a great read.

 

[Ian Price]

So today I finished at 10pm on 49%, that was with a 69 minute and 39 minute run on GPS and using HRM, some light usage checking iMessages and notifications etc, very happy with this. But Monday was 29% with only one 40 minute walk. All I’ve done since then is rebooted watch and turned a couple of notifications and background refreshes off. One thing I did notice on Monday when the battery drained by 22% overnight was I had higher than normal drain on my phone battery.

 

[mrougeux]

Prior to Watch os6, I could easily get one day+ battery life. Sometimes nearly 2 days. Since, I can't even get a full day on my Series 2. It's terrible. I used to brag about the battery life, but now it is embarrassing. I have made no changes to my settings. Now I need to reduce functionality to even get close to a day, but I still never do.

 

[eclipse01]

Prior to Watch os6, I could easily get one day+ battery life. Sometimes nearly 2 days. Since, I can't even get a full day on my Series 2. It's terrible. I used to brag about the battery life, but now it is embarrassing. I have made no changes to my settings. Now I need to reduce functionality to even get close to a day, but I still never do.

to be fair, hardware/age of your watch is not helping out your matters...

 

[thadoggfather]

Do you guys turn off a lot of the Siri active stuff, and background app refresh?

I would imagine that will help a lot

its not like you don't still get notifications with background app refresh off

 

[psac]

I was getting some pretty bad battery life on my (ancient by now) Series 1 after getting a new phone and having to setup the Watch from scratch again. I found one of the settings I had on was the music sync for Heavy Rotation items. Once I turned that off, I was fine again. (I also have Automatic App Install and Background Refresh off.) I never even come close to losing full battery by the end of the day.

 

[nph]

I turn off Siri except pressing the dial. All background off except for weather and It helped a lot.

 

[eclipse01]

Do you guys turn off a lot of the Siri active stuff, and background app refresh?

I would imagine that will help a lot

its not like you don't still get notifications with background app refresh off

I don't turn off anything except the noise decibel thing which i'm guessing doesn't do much of anything.

I also don't have really "any" 3rd party apps on my watch which helps a lot.

 

[thadoggfather]

I turn off Siri except pressing the dial. All background off except for weather and It helped a lot.

weather even updates with background app refresh on it off, doesn't it?



only been on 6.1.2 for half a day, upgraded early evening to pair with my 13.3 XR (jailbreak soon), from 5.0.1 paired with iOS 12.0.1 and I'm sure part of it was indexing but seemed to be dropping like a rock on my series 4 right off the bat, even after a couple hours.

Once I turned off all the background app refresh crap, and Siri stuff except press the dial, it seems to have stabilized. I'll of course be testing and using it more often to get a better gauge over time since its what it's going to be on for the foreseeable future, but.


at 83% from 100% after 5.5 hours with the fancy blue watch face and the smooth seconds hand.

as long as I can get through the day, its fine

 

[MuffCabbage]

As an update, my watch is not reaching 18 hours with WiFi off, backgrounding off, Walkie Talkie disabled, etc. and no workouts so I sent it in to Apple and it came back with no fault found and still poor battery. Might be trying again...

 

[Bigdog9586]

I’ve had mine off the charger since 7am. Did a 90 minute workout and it’s already down to 67% at 12:15. This won’t last until this evening at this rate. Hope it improves as I’m hoping everything is still syncing from the backup. If not, Always On will be shut off and this upgrade will have been a complete waste.

I had terrible battery life till I turned off always on and touch screen to see it. I get about 36 or more hours now

 

[mrako84]

My old S4 was lasting just 10/12 hours. It consumed approximately 10/12% per hour without doing anything; just having it on my wrist while at the office. After a few months of unpairing, pairing, resetting, disabling all functions, notifications and apps I decided to take it back to ISTYLE, which is the official reseller here in Croatia (since we don't have Apple Stores yet). After a week or so they gave me a new watch. I got no explanation to what happened to my old watch, just that it was faulty. My "new" S4 now lasts 2 days and I am finally very happy with it.

 

[kitenski]

I had terrible battery life till I turned off always on and touch screen to see it. I get about 36 or more hours now

how many hours would you get with always on "on"?

 

[Amminger]

Before I went to WatchOS 6 and MacOS, the Catalina battery life of my S3 was great. Under normal use the battery was fine for almost 2 days. Since WatchOS 6 and Catalina I have a very strange behaviour.
During the week I work with my iMac and my S3 dropped to 10% after 7-8 hours.
On weekends, when I am far away from my iMac, the battery is usually still at 75% towards evening.

I have observed this for several weeks now.

• Near my iMac = battery discharges quickly.
• Far away from my iMac = battery life is normal

Meanwhile I have switched off everything that somehow communicates with the iMac. (e.g. unlock mac with AppleWatch) but without success.

If anyone else has an idea I would be very grateful.

 

[MuffCabbage]

As an update, my watch is not reaching 18 hours with WiFi off, backgrounding off, Walkie Talkie disabled, etc. and no workouts so I sent it in to Apple and it came back with no fault found and still poor battery. Might be trying again...

Another update, I just chatted with Support again and they ran a remote diagnosis and determined half my battery capacity was depleted. Sending it in again with "fingers crossed for a more accurate diagnosis"

 

[MuffCabbage]

Another update, I just chatted with Support again and they ran a remote diagnosis and determined half my battery capacity was depleted. Sending it in again with "fingers crossed for a more accurate diagnosis"

New watch now at 96% after 5 hours of use. Much better

Also my last watch, on the day I was sending it in, completely died and would not charge/boot anymore.

 

[nph]

That is great. what have you turned off or is this with everything on?

 

[MuffCabbage]

That is great. what have you turned off or is this with everything on?

This was when it was set up as a new watch without anything really turned off except for disabling WalkieTalkie, but it was still on WatchOS 5.3.
I updated to 6.1.3 last night and today Im not achieving near as good battery life. Hopefully it settles down.