The watchOS 10 battery life thread [MERGED]

[ndouglas]

Nah, my glass is always half full and 65% is not almost dead, but almost as good as new 😂

Let's hope you're not right. I expect Series X to be a major upgrade, so I'd like to skip Series 9.

Wow, props to you for such a positive outlook! Very admirable. I would personally get a battery replacement at the first opportunity (i.e. < 80%)…

Sadly like most posters above I am experiencing similar drain today for Day 1 for me of using the OS 10 update. Normally I think it‘s good to remember you have to give these things time to settle and that we can’t make assumptions so early, but in this case it is very extreme / drastic how much worse the battery drains compared to the OS 9 … sheesh!

AW series 7 here at 88% battery health.

 

[flboy44]

On the watch, Settings -> Battery -> Battery Health

Is this not available on the series 4? Found it!

 

[bradincroton]

Series 6, battery health 82%. Upgraded to 10 last night. Went on a run today with 53% charge (low for when i went out at 5pm (took off charger around 645am). It died 47 minutes into my run (with spotify running). Pathetic. Ultra can't come soon enough. Iphone 14pro also seems lower than usual, but not as crazy as watch.

 

[iMas70]

AW Series 5 here. Updated it last night. Very noticeable difference in the battery life. I used to be able to make it through my day (7am until later at night) before charing. With that, it would still have about 25% or more most of the time. I was at 25% at 5pm today. Looking forward to my AWU2 next week. Won't have to worry about making it through the day with that.

 

[schnitzer.z4]

AW Ultra here too! Battery is worst after OS 10

 

[Sigp232]

After downloading OS 10. Have you guys disabled the widgets on the watch? Big difference battery wise on mine after deleting them this afternoon. Mine is a S7 watch battery health 91.

 

[Debauch]

My Ultra is down to 38% at 20 hours. I used to get 2.5 to 3 days!!

 

[ndouglas]

Just a reminder that (presumably) it can help to offer feedback here, as I did today:

Product Feedback

We would love to hear your comments about any of our hardware and software products. Send us your thoughts.

www.apple.com

Hopefully they'll get the message if enough people do it.

 

[Saint_Blaise]

For me, the battery drain seems to have stopped as of a few hours ago.

 

[InAustralia]

WatchOS10 is definitely draining my battery faster. Although my watch is old (Series 5), I easily got though a day (usually ending the day with about 30% battery left) after about 16-18 hours. After updating to WatchOS10, it's been 6 hours now and my battery is down to 48%.

I'll give it a few days to see if it settles down, but at the moment it's not going to get me though the day.

 

[KeanosMagicHat]

I see there are many with previous models of watches on the thread, so hopefully it is useful to provide a comparison on the Ultra 1 for anyone considering an upgrade in the near future.

I use the new modular ultra watch face which, including the seconds bezel, gives me nine different types of information, so complications galore.

In the short time I have been using it, I have been amazed by the battery life on watchOS 10, particularly with an instance where I did not have quick access to a charger and had to switch to low power mode.

I was staggered by how long it lasted from around 3% to the point where I charged literally as the watch powered down.

It was quite frankly amazing.

Now this is very early days of course and perhaps my position may change over time, but these are my initial thoughts based upon using iOS 17 since not long after the RC build came out.

 

[hyperreal]

I have a Series 8 that I've worn daily and nightly since launch. In addition to charging, I only take the watch off when taking a shower, going to sauna or getting my hands dirty. So I've got a pretty good feel of how the battery works in my daily life.
And I can tell that something's definitely been off after the update to watchOS 10.

My routine goes - or at least used to go - like this:
Charge to 100% in the morning or early afternoon
Wearing the watch throughout the day AND the subsequent night (with sleep focus and sleep tracking), the battery level would be at around 70% the next morning. (This used to be as high as 80% but that was with less exercise and a brand new watch.)
I would then wear the watch for another day without having to charge, usually ending up with no less than 20% in the evening, so I could just quickly charge to around 35-40% for sleep tracking, and then charge to 100% in the morning.

This was on watchOS 9.

Yesterday I was deep cleaning the bathroom and I didn't want to wear the watch since I was handling detergents. So I put it in the charger, since updating in the previous evening had messed up my routine anyway, and I thought this was a good spot to recharge. I was finished around 3pm and the battery level was 100%.
I then went on with the rest of the day. I can't remember what the exact charge level was when I went to bed but at 7am it was 70%.

So I went from 100% to 70% in just 16 hours instead of 24 and this was with only 8 minutes of exercise without GPS data. I don't know how much worse it would have been if I had gone on a long walk.
It's been two hours since I woke up and it's now at 65%.
The battery health shows 100%.

I used to have slightly increased battery drain for maybe a day after minor OS updates but this is on another scale entirely.

 

[Selandia]

Her is my observation about watch OS10.

I did the update monday evening and everything went well. And recharged it Thursday morning finish at 9.00am

But yesterday after work my watch battery was down to 30% at 17.30 pm normally it is around 60/65%, ok, I did make a recharge that evening to 100% and put watch back on at about 10.20pm fully recharged and went to bed to sleep.

At to 2 o'clock am I woke up, my battery was down to 72% went back to sleep, but at 4 o'clock am I work up for the day, now the battery was at only 4% I always getting notification about my rest puls so notting change here.

Then of cause I recharge the watch again to only 62% because I will do a run for 30min, but that charging only took 15min. to go from 4% to 62% very odd. One more odd thing, after 30min. running watch was still at 62% battery. lol.

I put the charger on again from 62% to 100% took now 1 hour and 25min, this is very very odd.

I keep and eye on it for the next few days

My watch is a serie 4, 44mm steel case with a battery health at 91% And I now order a Ultra II

 

[szilske]

After downloading OS 10. Have you guys disabled the widgets on the watch? Big difference battery wise on mine after deleting them this afternoon. Mine is a S7 watch battery health 91.

Nope, but I removed them now, so let's see if that improves things.

Unpair/restore from backup did not help so far.

 

[watchthisspace]

AW6 here - started my day at 86%, now at 41%. No workouts or activites tracked.. Doesn't seem right.

EDIT: friends AW6 is in similar usage, I may over thinking it.

 

[Jackbequickly]

After a full 24 hours, I fine my Ultra‘s battery consumption about the same.

 

[rbart]

The same problems have been referenced on a French website:

watchOS 10 pas tendre avec les batteries des anciennes Apple Watch ?

Comme toute mise à jour majeure du système, watchOS 10 va mettre à mal l’autonomie de votre Apple Watch pendant un jour ou deux. C’est normal, le système doit réindexer du contenu, il y a aussi de nombreuses apps à mettre à jour et une activité dans l’ensemble anormalement élevée pendant...

www.watchgeneration.fr

 

[Diopter]

No improvement for mine today. It's using about 10% per hour without any use (just showing the watch face).

In a few hours when it hits 10% I'll post the battery graphs from both today and from before I updated to watchOS 10, which show the dramatic difference in idle consumption.

You would naturally expect watchOS 10 would use more battery than watchOS 9, but this huge difference can't be normal. There must be some background process that's stuck in a loop or constantly trying to sync something.

 

[Yptcn]

After putting my watch 7 on the stand last night I noticed a notification ( Didn’t take a screeshor , will do it tonight ) saying something like it would not charge up to 100% to save battery health. I think it can be tweaked but not sure how yet.
Plugged it back in again, here is what it says :

»Open charge ring means Apple Watch will now charge to an optimized limit to help extend battery lifespan.
Tap to charge beyond limit. »

I found this on the  website :

About Optimized Battery Charging on your Apple Watch - Apple Support

With Optimized Battery Charging, your Apple Watch learns from your daily charging habits to improve the lifespan of your battery. And supported Apple Watch models offer additional battery charge optimizations with Optimized Charge Limit.

support.apple.com

Hope it might help.

 

[Selandia]

Her is my observation about watch OS10.

I did the update monday evening and everything went well. And recharged it Thursday morning finish at 9.00am

But yesterday after work my watch battery was down to 30% at 17.30 pm normally it is around 60/65%, ok, I did make a recharge that evening to 100% and put watch back on at about 10.20pm fully recharged and went to bed to sleep.

At to 2 o'clock am I woke up, my battery was down to 72% went back to sleep, but at 4 o'clock am I work up for the day, now the battery was at only 4% I always getting notification about my rest puls so notting change here.

Then of cause I recharge the watch again to only 62% because I will do a run for 30min, but that charging only took 15min. to go from 4% to 62% very odd. One more odd thing, after 30min. running watch was still at 62% battery. lol.

I put the charger on again from 62% to 100% took now 1 hour and 25min, this is very very odd.

I keep and eye on it for the next few days

My watch is a serie 4, 44mm steel case with a battery health at 91% And I now order a Ultra II

Update. Now after 3hours and 10min battery is Down to 75% only walking at the offfice.

 

[velocityblue5.0]

i'm seconding it all in here....my Ultra battery was tanked after the update, which is ridiculous since it used to get me through two full days, now it definitely won't. and my two series 5 watches are both abysmal. Hopefully it gets better over the week, but yeah, pretty bad. And to think I bet they changed the heart rate to not update on the watch face to 'save battery' so itll go 45 minutes without updating so you have no accurate current reading, but the battery life is still awful. go figure!

 

[MarkX]

After a full 24 hours, I fine my Ultra‘s battery consumption about the same.

Same here.

 

[tomacintosh]

Installed on my S4 watch yesterday and it lasted 6 hours before being completely dead. With watchOS9 I was going to bed with still like 25% battery left. Thought maybe it was because the new OS was doing some background journaling etc so thought I'll see how it is today..

Got up and put watch on, within 30 minutes it was down to 89%. 20 minutes later down to 81%. 15 mins later 75%.

I decided to factory reset the watch and setup as a new device just incase there were some background issues. Resetting it took it down to 37% battery and once all apps were installed it was down to 13%.

I've just put it on charge again and I will see if the reset did anything but I will be extremely annoyed if this update has killed my battery. I know the score, you try and complain and get made out to be a conspiracy theorist who should just buy a new watch...

 

[bradincroton]

Series 6, battery health 82%. Upgraded to 10 last night. Went on a run today with 53% charge (low for when i went out at 5pm (took off charger around 645am). It died 47 minutes into my run (with spotify running). Pathetic. Ultra can't come soon enough. Iphone 14pro also seems lower than usual, but not as crazy as watch.

going out this morning to do another 10K and see how much is drained by the end. not changing anything on watch from last night.

 

[Apple_Robert]

It’s not unusual for the battery life to take a hit 24 or so hours after a major update.