Apple Watch Battery Life

iOS
#1

I have a 42mm Series 0 that I’ve had since just after release. When I first got it the battery lasted all day long without issue and still had 50% ish when I went to bed of an evening.

With the later updates that dropped a little, but generally, it could walk through a day without any concerns.

Today I’m down to <10% and in powersave mode at 3:30pm after putting it on about 7am. This is only the second time it’s done this and I’m wondering why given today has been very light usage with only one message, no meeting alerts and nothing… hell I haven’t even left the office today so it’s barely even steps!

My theory.
The watch has been sitting on the charging dock since I took it off last Friday, so four days. This morning when I put it on I don’t remember checking the charge level, but since it was on the dock in nightstand mode I am pretty confident it was (or should have been) fully charged. The other thing I noticed is that it was pretty warm. Not hot, but warm enough that I noticed it being warm.

Thinking back to the last (and only) time it’s done this sort of thing before, I do think it was after a long weekend of not using the watch. I figured it might be app related last time so deleted a bunch of apps that I didn’t use on the watch to be sure and it’s been fine ever since.

Now I don’t usually notice it being warm and normally it’s used every day… So the question is, is there an issue where leaving it on charge for a few days kills the battery in some way? (for only that cycle… like maybe it stops charging at some point then some bug causes it to fail to maintain the charge so it slowly drains even though it’s on the charger??)

Has anyone else noticed anything like this?

#2

Mine (same model) was on the charger for the same period. Went on my wrist at 6.40am today and at time of writing is at 86%

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#3

Was it warm this morning?

#4

No, no more than usual after it comes off the charger.

When was the last time yours got a power cycle? Mine is probably 2 weeks ago - every so often (when I think that it’s been quite a long time since the last time) I’ll switch my devices off/on because all software sucks, operating systems included :smirk:

#5

I have a series 2. I notice that, say I go for a run, I get back and chuck on charge for a little while whilst showering etc, and take it off, it’s warm. But if I leave it on overnight, it’s obviously 100% by morning and is cool because it’s not charging any more, it’s just sitting there probably trickle charging at 100%. So I’m guessing it will only be hot if it was actively charging or had recently been actively charging, but otherwise it should be cool. At least in my series 2 experience. Hope that makes sense.

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#6

What Mitty says. I have a series 1 and his experience is as mine.

#7

So I got home yesterday at 6 pm and put it on the charger, this morning at 6:30-7:00 I pulled it off to go to work and it was a little warm, about the same as before, not hot… just warm.

Somewhat recently, probably a couple of weeks ago? Yesterday when coming out of power save mode it looked like it was fully rebooting, it definitely took a while and looked like a reboot.

About 2 hours into my day after a commute to work the watch is still reporting 100%, will see how that goes during the day.

#8

It would be good if you could set the watch to automatically restart every day at 3am or something, to avoid any niggles which might occur at the lack of a reboot.

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#9

5 hours in and I’m at 94%, such a huge difference in performance seems sort of insane.

Is it some piece of software that is running in the background chewing up power after some random series of connect/disconnects, charge cycles… something? It’s all a bit strange.

I’d settle for a “restart” button so you could just hit that as you jump in the shower and have it done when you get back (rather than wait for it to shut down then hit the power button again). Ditto for the iPhone.

#10

And now I’m at 64% (at 10pm before bed that is).

#11

Well, New Year’s day after being up all night before and having the watch on charge for only about 5 hours (but still enough to be reporting a full charge in the morning) it was dead by late afternoon.

Power cycled, re-charged and it was all good again.

Today at 10:43 I’m already down to 75% from a 7:30 am start so I’ve just power cycled it to see if that slows the progression.

Next step if this doesn’t help is to factory reset the watch and try setting it up from scratch to see if that helps. I don’t have anything on there at all and my setup is very basic so it shouldn’t take too long (except for the actual restore time).

***On a side note, in going back and reading through this thread I was trying to work out what time @FaultyTaco post was made since it’s relevant and all. If you are wondering, hovering over the “7d” (or however old the post is by the time you read this) it does show the date and time it was posted. But for my own piece of mind and later ease of reading I’m going to try to put the date/time in my posts where it’s relevant :stuck_out_tongue: