The watchOS 10 battery life thread [MERGED]

[rbart]

With 79% battery health, you have a big impact on battery life.
If you replace the battery (Apple replaces the complete Watch), you will gain a lot of battery life.
It depends on your usage, but it's interesting

 

[chriswhv6]

Has there been any mention for the 80% charge limit all of sudden not kicking in any longer?
Mine now for over one month, each night not once have i seen the 80% max limit charge stay on.

 

[yudilks]

I have always been very critical with this battery problem after watchOS 10 update in my series 5, but with the latest update 10.2 the battery consumption is much more stable, higher than that of watchos 9, but acceptable.

I take the watch out of the charger at 1:00am, I sleep with it and the battery is at 5% at night 9:30pm. Display always on except at night. It I do an hour bike activity track I need a small charge at mid day.

The health of the battery has dropped to 79%, normal with a watch that is more than 3 years old. This health allows me to change the battery. I don't know if this replace will contribute to a much longer battery life.

Bets regards.

Yes it will contribute to longer battery life. The battery would still store 25% at night 9:30 pm from your scenario.

 

[ResolutionNZ]

This has become quite a long thread. For the people who have brought their watches to an Apple store with these issues, have they said anything? What are they doing to handle it?

Fortunately I am still on 10.0.2 on both my UW2 and my AW8. I have auto update shut off and I always give these things a few weeks before updating. It became obvious early into this update that there were some bad battery issues for a significant number of people here.

They replaced my SE(2) which was under warranty. I'm holding onto watchOS 9 for as long as possible.

 

[wbeasley]

watchOS10.2 made my 82% Series 4 drains its battery within 2 hours. Yep, not a typo. The nuclear approach did not work for me.

The battery draining issue stopped after I removed the Weather widget! Oh, I also turned off the Music playlist sync.

We need a permanent fix from Apple!!! I have called, reported it, complained, etc. Still no working update to fix this battery drain issue.

Thanks just took the Weather widget off the screen and will see if that helps.
Cheers!

Update: taking Weather off didnt improve battery life ;(

 

[Jamvan]

Whelp, I think my Apple Watch saga may be coming to an end. The battery issue persists and in the past 24 hours, the touch input has decided to stop working altogether. I've forced reboot multiple times, unpaired/paired multiple times (the first time I had to force reboot out of it when I couldn't set a 4-digit pin due to the aforementioned touch not working. I've read multiple threads and more often than not, the unpair/pair works as a last ditch effort. But not for me. As an S6, I don't see much benefit in driving the 70 minutes to take it to a Genius so this may be it.

$550+ for a watch you can wear three years. Not a good investment.

 

[threesixty360]

I installed the beta and it solved all the battery drain problems. Nearly made me go out and get a new watch!! I have a series 4 btw. I’m afraid to install the very latest beta now (10.3?) in case they kill the battery life again.

I think it’s appalling that they make updates that do so much damage to their product and take ages to solve them. I’m pretty sure if I’d gone into the Apple Store they would have “gaslighted” me and told me it’s normal operation and there was nothing wrong.. and we can “help” you by giving you a 50 pound discount off an 800 quid update to “help” because we at Apple are so kind! (They actually did that to me last time).

Oh well. Turned off automatic updates,
I’m my being burned again by them.

 

[Jamvan]

Whelp, I think my Apple Watch saga may be coming to an end. The battery issue persists and in the past 24 hours, the touch input has decided to stop working altogether. I've forced reboot multiple times, unpaired/paired multiple times (the first time I had to force reboot out of it when I couldn't set a 4-digit pin due to the aforementioned touch not working. I've read multiple threads and more often than not, the unpair/pair works as a last ditch effort. But not for me. As an S6, I don't see much benefit in driving the 70 minutes to take it to a Genius so this may be it.

$550+ for a watch you can wear three years. Not a good investment.

Dun dun done. Like, literally done. Followed the support recommendations and it routinely came back to the red exclamation. It went into a reboot loop about 4 hours ago and there it stays.

As this brings my battery drainage issues to a painful end, I will return the thread to its regularly scheduled general battery frustrations.

 

[Dog Bone Malone]

AWU2 running watch OS 10.2.

No complaints here.

 

[scottwiz105]

Just saw this thread, and 40 pages is a bit much to go through, so I apologize if this has been covered....

In addition to the worse battery life, I'm also noticing that my watch (S4) won't charge past 80%. I've turned optimization off, restarted, restored. You name it, nothing seems to work. I've charged it for a full day and it never moves past 80%. This all started since upgrading to OS10.

I switched back to using and old fitbit in the mean time since I can't get a full day out of my S4. The one thing I did notice though was after leaving it on the charger for about 2 weeks, yesterday morning I got a notice on my phone that it finally charged to 100%. I took it off the charger to use yesterday, put it back on the last night, and back to the same thing. 80% charge max.

Anyone else dealing with this and if so, did you have any luck fixing the issue?

 

[The Cockney Rebel]

Just saw this thread, and 40 pages is a bit much to go through, so I apologize if this has been covered....

In addition to the worse battery life, I'm also noticing that my watch (S4) won't charge past 80%. I've turned optimization off, restarted, restored. You name it, nothing seems to work. I've charged it for a full day and it never moves past 80%. This all started since upgrading to OS10.

I switched back to using and old fitbit in the mean time since I can't get a full day out of my S4. The one thing I did notice though was after leaving it on the charger for about 2 weeks, yesterday morning I got a notice on my phone that it finally charged to 100%. I took it off the charger to use yesterday, put it back on the last night, and back to the same thing. 80% charge max.

Anyone else dealing with this and if so, did you have any luck fixing the issue?

I’m not having this issue, but my iPhone used to notify me (quietly) when my watch was fully charged.

Since watchOS 10, I no longer get this notification.

 

[Howard2k]

Are you using a third party charger/cable? I think there were some issues with Belkin device recently, and perhaps others.

 

[Diopter]

my iPhone used to notify me (quietly) when my watch was fully charged

That’s interesting, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a notification like that in years of owning Apple Watches! I wonder if it’s because I charge over night, or if something specific has to be set/enabled for it to do it.

 

[scottwiz105]

Are you using a third party charger/cable? I think there were some issues with Belkin device recently, and perhaps others.

I am, but I never had any issues before with the same charger. Not before the OS updates anyway. I‘ll give it a shot though.

seems like with all of these regulations starting to gain traction on charging standards they would need to open up the use of 3rd party stuff sooner than later.

 

[xDKP]

I installed the beta and it solved all the battery drain problems. Nearly made me go out and get a new watch!! I have a series 4 btw. I’m afraid to install the very latest beta now (10.3?) in case they kill the battery life again.

I think it’s appalling that they make updates that do so much damage to their product and take ages to solve them. I’m pretty sure if I’d gone into the Apple Store they would have “gaslighted” me and told me it’s normal operation and there was nothing wrong.. and we can “help” you by giving you a 50 pound discount off an 800 quid update to “help” because we at Apple are so kind! (They actually did that to me last time).

Oh well. Turned off automatic updates,
I’m my being burned again by them.

So what version worked out for you?

 

[threesixty360]

So what version worked out for you?

I’m on 10.2(21S5358a)

Not sure what the actual point number is but I think it’s the beta before the latest 10.3

I’ve turned off automatic updates until others have confirmed they haven’t trashed the battery again.

 

[The Cockney Rebel]

That’s interesting, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a notification like that in years of owning Apple Watches! I wonder if it’s because I charge over night, or if something specific has to be set/enabled for it to do it.

I looked it up, and there's a setting in the watch app, where you can set reminders for charging before bed (for sleep tracking) and for when it's fully charged.

It's located in the sleep section, of the watch app.

It's charging at the moment, so I can't say if switching that option on works or not.

Edit: Yes, enabling that setting now sends a notification to my iPhone when my watch is fully charged. No audible alert, but a notification on screen.

 

[xDKP]

I’m on 10.2(21S5358a)

Not sure what the actual point number is but I think it’s the beta before the latest 10.3

I’ve turned off automatic updates until others have confirmed they haven’t trashed the battery again.

I have an Ultra 1 on 10.2 as well and still not even close to WatchOS 9 battery

 

[threesixty360]

I have an Ultra 1 on 10.2 as well and still not even close to WatchOS 9 battery

I think there are multiple beta’s on 10.2. So they may act differ g. It’s also possible they fixed issues on one model (my series 4) and not others. I think it’s even more worrying that they can’t solve this stuff universally.

I suppose if the battery life is still bad maybe try the latest beta and see if it’s better? But this is really annoying from Apple.

 

[ResolutionNZ]

My limited warranty expires today. I won't be upgrading to watchOS 10 until all the bugs have been sorted. I don't want to go back to my S3 model again after my regular watch failed with a watchOS 10 upgrade and was replaced under warranty. The S3 just isn't supported by most app devs anymore.

 

[Debauch]

I can’t believe this thread is still going. There’s obviously a battery drain issue that seems to be ignored by Apple. I posted several times in here about my issues and attempts to get battery life back to OS9 level. Nothing ever worked. I finally gave up and, out of frustration, bought a 51mm Gen 2 Garmin Epix Pro. Ten day battery life with everything turned on. 20+ days if I kill OAD. Ridiculous battery life. OS is not as polished as Apple’s but the metrics and insights it gives are leaps better that Apple’s.

Anyway, not hating. Different strokes. I still have the Ultra … in its native habitat on the charger.

Hopefully Apple fixes the battery issues though.

 

[rbart]

It's because these battery issues are not widespread at all ...
It's some very specific situations that cause the problem.
For the immense majority of people, there are no battery issues with watchOS10.

 

[ResolutionNZ]

There are a large number of complaints on the apple discussion/support boards...

 

[rbart]

There are a large number of complaints on the apple discussion/support boards...

It's very few compared to the number of users.
When there is a xxx-gate with an Apple product, it's very quickly widespread and exposed on main news sites, with a lot of people complaining about planned obsolescence and blaming Apple.
It's absolutely not the case here. Some known and frequent battery issues have been addressed by updates.
I know there are remaining problems, as with all software, but it's not for a majority of people, and it was the same with OS9, 8 ...
At home, with 5 different watches (from 4 to Ultra 2), no battery problem ! No visible difference from watchOS 9.
Beware of magnifying glass effect of such threads !

 

[Tevosn]

I’m still not impressed with the battery life. I feel it last 12 hours or so shorter than in the previous version, but may be a bit better that it was when the new OS was first installed.