Terrible battery life

[ginkobiloba]

Yeah, i also noticed much shorter battery life on my aw4 after the update. Hopefully it will return to normal soon as some have suggested.
Also, I’ve just turned off the noise monitoring today, maybe that will help.

 

[BillGates1969]

This seems really inconsistent and I can't get why.

Yesterday mine was showing at 100% for a few hours a complete change to day one. But today less than 5 mins after it had been taken off the charger it had dropped 1% that is crazy.

18mins usage and 1hr27min off the charger and its down to 93%.

But everything is the same not done any more or less with it today than yesterday. I suspect there is a bug or three or a charging hiccup somewhere. Expect a jump after the the first update as something isn't quite right at all very inconsistent at the moment.

When I was on the beta I found a reboot of both phone and watch every couple of days restored normal behaviour.

I know you shouldn't have to, but there may be a battery drain or memory leak that needs to be patched.

 

[Donnation]

I hope you're right, but my concern is that I was running the GM of 6.0 since it was released and was getting the best battery life I'd gotten on the Series 4 since I'd owned it. I'd always gotten very good battery life on it, but since running the betas on my S4 the battery life was spectacular by the time the Gold Master came around.

 

[MrGunnyPT]

I can never discuss battery life with anyone because this is how it goes for me...

- 6 am waking up and doing some quick monitoring work before heading to gym
- 7 am gym for an hour.. Using AW Series 4 + AirPods listening to offline musics.. + workout app for Strength Training (around 15-20% battery loss here)

Rest of the day I'm at work and I get home and I have it around 35% left which lasts me for me for the night because I use it for AutoSleep tracking.

I gotta charge right before bed to not die at the end of the evening

 

[xxray]

I slept with my S5 on last night. Slept 8.5 hours and only lost about 12% battery life. I’m impressed. I had theatre mode on and I have background app refresh permanently off. Today will be the first full day that I use the watch (I just got it yesterday), so I’ll get to see how the battery is during the day.

 

[smr]

Over the weekend I was getting about 12-13hrs from my AW5 (i.e. using about 8% per hour) - this was with AoD and Sound monitoring both on. I was also wearing short sleeves...

Today, I have switched off sound monitoring and I'm at 89% after 3+hours (less than 4% per hour). The other difference today is I have long sleeves. I have noticed that the AoD screen is off when it is hidden under a shirt/jacket. Could this be the cause of differences in battery drain?

I will see how the rest of today works and then perhaps try with sound monitoring on tomorrow.

 

[baddj]

it's now Monday night here,

Sunday
- 9am to 6pm went from 100% to 20% Battery
- Always On display Enabled
- Environmental Noise Enabled

Monday
- 9am to 6pm went from 100% to 70% Battery
- Always On display Disabled
- Environmental Noise Enabled

So for me just disabling the always on display made a huge difference in battery life I'll turn on Always on Display again tomorrow and see if its the same as Sunday or not.

 

[haruhiko]

I concur for the poor battery life especially for the Series 5. My watch was down to 65% at 2PM around, and 40% by the end of the working hours. Usually, for the Series 4, it still had 50%+ battery left when I go to sleep at around 12am.

 

[rbart]

it's now Monday night here,

Sunday
- 9am to 6pm went from 100% to 20% Battery
- Always On display Enabled
- Environmental Noise Enabled

Monday
- 9am to 6pm went from 100% to 70% Battery
- Always On display Disabled
- Environmental Noise Enabled

So for me just disabling the always on display made a huge difference in battery life I'll turn on Always on Display again tomorrow and see if its the same as Sunday or not.

I notice exactly the same behavior with mine.
AOD off today, and: 6am: 100% / 2pm: 78%
Tomorrow, I will try again with AOD.
I hope they will fix this battery drain as AOD is the main new feature of AW5

 

[kitenski]

I was on 100% at 08:40, now on 88% at 13:00 here in the UK with AOD on and noise off.

 

[Trent0341]

The battery isn't quite as good as my series 3 was but it is fine (read: I'm not having the problems being reported here). I had 15 hours of use yesterday (over 90 minutes of the workout app using cellular) with AOD on as well as the noise detection enabled. When I put it on the charger I was at 22% which means I would have been able to go approximately 20 hours. I have days that last longer than 20 hours but they are fairly rare.

 

[johnasch]

I made it about 16 hours yesterday before it died. No workouts, as I’m generally very lazy on Sundays. Minimal notifications as well other than some texts here and there. I’m interested to see how today goes since I’m back in the office.

so far this hasn’t been great, I’m not getting anywhere close to the claims Apple is making seeing as I didn’t workout or stream music and I was still two hours short. Gonna give it a solid week and if it doesn’t improve it’s gonna get returned for a new one.

 

[Bazooka-joe]

82% after 7 hours. So still going well and will be around 76% when I get home from work which is a few percent better that OS5. When my S5 arrives and I pair to that one with the same settings, except for enabling AOD, I will be disappointed if the battery life degrades by more than an additional 20%

 

[ericg301]

there's clearly a software bug in the stack. seems like apple engineers are aware. i don't think there's any amount of "indexing" or fiddling with features that will resolve it.

if i were a betting man, i'd bet we'll see a Watch 6.0X update tomorrow along with iOS13.

 

[Donnation]

there's clearly a software bug in the stack. seems like apple engineers are aware. i don't think there's any amount of "indexing" or fiddling with features that will resolve it.

if i were a betting man, i'd bet we'll see a Watch 6.0X update tomorrow along with iOS13.

I hope you’re right, but like i said, the battery life was great on 6.0 on the series 4. My guess is that the AOD is just going to kill it now matter what, which makes this a totally useless upgrade from the series 4 of its going to be this bad.

 

[gymratjudy]

SG4 40mm- 49 mins usage, 9 hours 43 mins standby and am at 81%. I did the unpair, pair and hard reset of both the iPhone and the watch and that seem to really help. I do have the noise app off.

 

[ericg301]

But none of the reviews mentioned this. They all, to a letter, said battery life was the same as the S4. That makes me think those review units were on a different software build than what was shipped to the masses. Could just be wishful thinking.

 

[pirarre]

I think a factory reset fixed my battery draining tbh. I have all the features turned on and battery life has been great so far...on par with my AWS4.

So I would recommenced a Factory Reset of the Watch and see if that fixes your battery issues.

 

[edlex]

I think you need to just give it a bit. I took off my 40mm SG off the charger at 8am today and it is now a little after 12pm and I am at 95%. Just a few text messages and the chime on and no workouts as of yet. I do have the noise notification turned off. I do think the noise app drains the battery.

Well I repaired it as new on Saturday and today I took it off the charger at 6am and at 8:51am it’s at 71%. That’s with noise turned off. I’m hoping there’s an update soon that takes care of this because with watchOS 5 I was at 70% by the end of the day

 

[Donnation]

But none of the reviews mentioned this. They all, to a letter, said battery life was the same as the S4. That makes me think those review units were on a different software build than what was shipped to the masses. Could just be wishful thinking.

yeah it’s just wishful thinking. It’s not possible for them to be on a different software. I think the reviews are a little unbalanced at times or that they are just using the watch bare bones with nothing running on it and not doing anything with it.

 

[gymratjudy]

Well I repaired it as new on Saturday and today I took it off the charger at 6am and at 8:51am it’s at 71%. That’s with noise turned off. I’m hoping there’s an update soon that takes care of this because with watchOS 5 I was at 70% by the end of the day

Did you do the hard reset of both the phone and the watch afterwards? Someone posted to unpair, pair and then force reset the iPhone, and then force reset the watch-in that order. This seems to have worked for me.

 

[pirarre]

I did a factory reset of my AWS5 late Saturday night and since then my battery life has been great. I’m using it with all features turned on (AOD, Background App Sync and Noise) and battery life has been on par with my AWS4.

Before the factory reset, battery was life was really bad!

So I would give a factory reset a shot to see if that fixes the battery issues for you.

 

[deeddawg]

there's clearly a software bug in the stack. seems like apple engineers are aware. i don't think there's any amount of "indexing" or fiddling with features that will resolve it.

if i were a betting man, i'd bet we'll see a Watch 6.0X update tomorrow along with iOS13.

I concur - there are enough reports of suddenly poor battery life on S4's that were previously fine.

As I remember we had a pretty quick WatchOS 5.0.1 release last year. Why break the pattern?

 

[Donnation]

I concur - there are enough reports of suddenly poor battery life on S4's that were previously fine.

As I remember we had a pretty quick WatchOS 5.0.1 release last year. Why break the pattern?

Well, I can tell you first hand, that after a couple of days the S4 battery life will be great, it just needs to index. The question is will the S5 be as good with the AOD. This will be day 4 for me and if there isn’t improvement today, there isn’t going to be improvement at least not on 6.0.

Its is a shame because they shouldn’t ship products like this. Even as big is a mess as 13.0 is, at least the battery life is stable. This is just embarrassing that Apple is shipping watches out the door like this, if in fact it doesn’t improve. If iFixit does a tear down and doesn’t see a change in the display technology then we were all pretty much taken here and the AOD could have been accomplished with the Series 4. I bet it could have been accomplished as is but oh well.

 

[rbart]

"Indexing" doesn't last for days ...
There is almost nothing to "index" on an apple watch.