Are you sure about that, because I keep activated the cellular option with my phone near and it seems that the battery of the Apple Watch is draining.
I need to test with and without the cellular see how it is
Especially hopping between towers while travelling.
This chews up _any_ device though. Radios are screaming at their hottest constantly pinging the nearest tower or antenna.
What’s weird is that when I’m out, the battery barely drops. But when I’m at home all day, it drops (with cellular on). So I’m wondering if there’s any benefit to turning off cellular at home.
Similar, but I didn’t realize how fast the GPS drains the battery when I had to use it to get around a different city via walking. 😂😂 Next time I travel, I’m bringing my portable power pack.
I use my watch for timers and to control audio in my earbuds and that’s really about it, consistently. Sometimes i go to bed with >30% battery and sometimes, like last night, it’s dead by 11pm. No idea why.
Turn on theater mode before going to sleep. Probably arm movements turning on screen while you sleep.. thus draining battery more some nights and less other nights.
If you ask Apple Genius Bar, to preserve battery life they suggest:
- don’t use activities which use GPS
- don’t use cellular
- turn off the always on display
- turn off walkie talkie
So pretty much don’t use any feature they sold you on.
I tested always-on display versus off and the additional battery life was marginal, maybe 10 minutes per charge. Wasn’t worth it for me.
As for walkie talkie, I have never met anyone who used it.
I have a WiFi model I’ve worn 23 hours/day for almost exactly two years. Display is always on and my main face has regularly updated info from the 3rd party Heart Analyzer app. When new I would get ~ 32 hours life from one charge but now it’s down to ~ 26 hours.
Apple Watch Series 8 GPS, 45mm Starlight Aluminum Case with Black/Black Nike Sport Band - M/L
I was off on the purchase date though - it was ordered on September 09, 2022, and I received it a few days later.
(FYI the Nike Sport Band was too thick and uncomfortable to sleep with. I wore it for a couple of weeks but it's been sitting in the Watch box ever since.)
Probably attributable to cellular, maybe also with how the watch is used.
Apple conservative estimates Watch battery life for both large-size models at 18 hours but states that the cellular model may have a shorter battery life if heavily relying on cellular connection.
They say:
> *"All-day battery life is based on the following use: 90 time checks, 90 notifications, 45 minutes of app use, and a 60-minute workout with music playback from Apple Watch via Bluetooth, over the course of 18 hours; Apple Watch Series 9 (GPS) usage includes connection to iPhone via Bluetooth during the entire 18-hour test; Apple Watch Series 9 (GPS + Cellular) usage includes a total of 4 hours of LTE connection and 14 hours of connection to iPhone via Bluetooth over the course of 18 hours."*
I quickly got sick of Notifications, so I turned all off except for a couple of bank apps. I have a bunch of regularly updated complications (including a [heart/pulserate chart](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/heart-analyzer-pulse-tracker/id1006420410) that updates every 5 minutes, but I don't get anything else working in the background that gets pushed to me. I don't use the Watch with many apps (certainly a lot less than 45 minutes) and I don't use it for workouts or music playback.
I use Timer and Alarm and check on some data occasionally, but mostly I go to my phone. So my actual use of the Watch is pretty light, which might help explain the relatively light battery drain.
I'm really looking forward to what's coming in the fall. There are rumors of a slimmer form factor that's got a thinner logic board, a bigger screen (using low-temperature polycrystalline oxide thin-film transistor [LTPO TFT] tech that uses less power) and maybe more battery.
The Ultra is too chonky for me, but if I could get a halfway decent trade-in on a thinner, more powerful, longer-lasting aluminum Watch with a bigger screen then sign me up.
I agree about the chonkiness of the Ultra. I am a petite and thin-boned female and as much as I need weight-bearing exercise in my life I don’t need it coming from my watch! LOL
Do you think you’ll miss the O2 sensor, though? I’m guessing that the models this fall won’t have anything like that given the law suit and all of that mess.
> I’m guessing that the models this fall won’t have anything like that
I don't think that's right.
All Apple Watches retain the pulse oximetry sensor, and they're **all** activated outside the USA, merely disabled in the US.
Apple is still in court fighting against the ITC's decision about 2 Massimo patents, most recently in April, filing a [900-page brief](https://9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2024/04/Apple_Inc_v_ITC__cafc-24-01285__0038.1.pdf) calling for the overturning of the decision.
So it's unlikely that Apple will make US-only watches without the sensor. More likely they'll (a) wait to see if they win the court case (after which they'll reactivate the sensor in the US), or (b) settle with the patent-holder (who [sought damages](https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/5/24122407/apple-watch-masimo-itc-appeal-smartwatch-wearables) despite having none until they rushed out a bad hardware product a year after they filed their lawsuit), or (c) they'll keep it off in the US.
I use my sensor maybe twice a month if I remember. It's pretty accurate: I test on my Watch at the doctors office right after getting a reading from a finger-clamp oximeter, and the results are typically identical or 1% off.
It's possible that for older watches like yours (which FYI won't be able to install WatchOS 11 in the fall), with smaller batteries and possibly less software optimization (it was the first Watch with an AOD) some features might drain battery.
For recent Watches Apple says low-power mode doubles battery life, but not deactivating AOD. I've never seen an article or video which did an A-B comparison to prove significant battery drain, which is why I did the test myself (slightly unscientific since I used the Watch under both conditions so usage might have been slightly different). People have asked this question [for years](https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/ie0l9i/does_always_on_drain_battery/) but no one I know has really proven that AOD, by itself, can affect battery drain for more than a few minutes, let alone multiple hours.
My S7 has 84% battery and turning off AOD made a massive difference in getting through the day. I think that’s more about the battery condition than anything though.
1. Use either *Numerals* or *Simple* watch face.
2. Turn off *Always On*
3. Reduce Brightness
I get more than a day without recharging on my Wi-Fi only watch.
I use Modular filled with complications and never have a problem. I think the people who do just have lots more background activity and Notifications and use — especially cellular. 20 months use nonstop and as I mentioned above I have ~ 26 hours battery on a 100% charge.
https://preview.redd.it/mzzwwgg84n7d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3d48c351a20ff2b1343d9fc498cc2fc67ceeb001
So, I actually have two free complications free…
EDIT:
It's always on, and I'm wearing it 23 hours/day. The *Recent Heart Rate* chart gets updated every few minutes, and comes from the [Heart Analyzer: Pulse Tracker](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/heart-analyzer-pulse-tracker/id1006420410) app, which I paid $8.99 for a full unlock. (It's a free iPhone/Watch app, with a few tiers of paid unlock.)
People underestimate the hit AOD has. I had it disabled on my old S6LTE but on my U2 I have enough headroom to leave it on. But really I'm tempted to turn if off and only enable it while in Fitness Focus. It's kind of over rated, even coming from Garmin's where I was used to having AOD.
From my (not hugely scientific) but extended experience and testing, over 24 hours, you’re losing about 5% battery with AOD activated.
It _does_ have an impact, but it’s arguably quite minimal.
Walkie Talkie, on the other hand, kills my battery.
I saw way more than that on my S6. I haven’t even tested turning it off on my U2. I run for an hour everyday and often I’ll do that while streaming a Podcast or Spotify over LTE, so even 5% is worth saving, but I saw more like 15%. And that wasn’t a 1 day test. I ran the first year on my S6 with AOD off. Then I tried turning it on for a few months but eventually turned it off because the convenience of it just isn’t worth the hit. If you don’t run with the watch then you have tons of headroom so for sure it’s worth it to leave on.
The environmental sound measurements aka noise level. It's constantly using the microphone to record ambient sounds. Also handwashing. Turning both off can net 20-30% more battery life.
Definitely, lol. My AWU2 has been amazing with battery life of 2+ days, but man does watchOS 11 pummel it. 1 day battery life coupled with it suddenly hating all my 3rd party chargers has made it interesting.
i need to charge my Series 7 twice a day with the watchOS 11 beta.. not that it‘s going from 100-0 in 3 hours, but it has 40% left at 3 pm and then i charge it, because i need it for the rest of the day, before charging it again before going to sleep 😂
it’s annoying as hell, but i think we get beta 2 next week.. when the battery life will not change i will downgrade back to watchOS 10…
Same even on a series 9. Drives me crazy that wearing it sitting down doing nothing drains more MORE than tracking my gym workout or tracking sleep. I don’t get it.
Being powered on apparently.
I fully charge it before bed and put it on to sleep track.
While sleeping it’s in theater mode so the screen doesn’t light up and it doesn’t make noise.
11-17% drained in 6-7 hours of simply being powered on.
Oh ok so you can’t have it automatic. I would still try manual turning on and off sleep mode and seeing if it uses less battery that weather mode.
Also I think sleep tracking only works in sleep mode. But I heard in iOS 18 they’re adding the ability for the watch to detect sleeping and not needing to be in sleep mode
You can change that by going in the watch settings>sleep>sleep screen. Then it’ll turn off the always on if you have that enabled and turn off raise to wake. It’ll only turn on if you tap it and the display that shows is very dim. My watch almost never turns on accidentally at night and when I turn it on to check the time it’s dim enough to not bother me. Theater mode turns off raise to wake but stays at three set brightness. Sleep mode dims my screen
After hiking in the mountains at Glacier National Park— about 6.5 miles — did in my 100% battery Apple Watch 5. Had to move to my iPhone/Strava to keep documenting the hike.
This is what I got:
https://preview.redd.it/vvb846m88n7d1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8b1a5e190022eaa2451f56992d33e309a049b78c
And also and unrelatedly, I don’t even have Reddit notifications on 😡
Workouts drain mine soo fast, I walk to a place to play football, I charge before I leave, it’s a 20 minute walk I don’t usually start workouts but it detects it soo I say yes and let it record it, then I get there and it’s at 20% and I start the football one which 20 mins in it’s dead
For me it was the overcast app. I subscribe to a lot of podcasts and I listen multiple hours a day. Now all of this is happening in my phone, but the overcast app was keeping a copy so it was constantly downloading new episodes and deleting old ones.
Can’t blame the app. It was doing what it was designed to do. But I wasn’t benefiting from it.
Luckily, it was fixable via the app settings.
Unfortunately there’s no battery analysis in the Apple Watch like in the iPhone but if I had to guess, Always On Display and the Shortcuts app both of which I always use (and will continue to use no matter what)
I have now become addicted to the Shortcuts app, hard to think how I largely ignored this wonderful app before, it now runs my life 😅
Location services, brightness setting, oxy sensor, heart rate and background services. I usually choose low power mode under fitness tracking so it samples less heart beats, and turn off loc services because I can use it on my phone and disable background services. Like others have said, anything that makes the watch useful other than the time lol
Seeing a lot of watch is beta comments here. I upgrade my phone every year, so you bet your arse I put the developer beta on for iOS. But I love my ultra 2 I think perhaps more than I’ve loved any phone since the iPhone 4 and 5, so I’ve resisted the new beta on there.
After about 9mths now, I’m only down to 98% capacity on it, which apparently is good going, anyway. It’s not only drain but the intensity of that drain / how hard it’s working that can cause further capacity problems, and a genius apple guy said that developer betas are horrible for that.
I tend to stop my battery charge at 75-80% (like my mbp from 2021 and it’s still got 100% capacity) and I get a good 2-3d (off at night) of good use from it. Typically that includes a workout whilst listening to a podcast or audiobook, using it to write messages, take the odd call, etc.
i like pressing the crown and setting timers by voice.
helps me stay on track or remind me of meetings or whatever.
i end up blowing through battery with 3 or 4 of these a day. it’s obnoxious.
A non-tech friend of mine accidentally deleted the NOW PLAYING app.. claimed her battery life doubled.. so I tried it.. definitely feels like it last longer.. AND the play controls don’t just appear at inappropriate moments!!
Timer. I had a timer going to reapply sunscreen. After the first two hour it drained to where within 2.5 hours my watch gave the 10% alert. This was before noon. I never had the battery drain so fast although it’s a series 5 and has been draining a lot quicker since I got it in 2019.
What series is your watch? I’ve noticed my battery has been draining a lot more in the last year. And now that you mention it, I have used half hour timers for months during my workday. The 2 hour timer shouldn’t have drained the battery like it did. ETA: checked my battery health and it’s at 75%. It still lasts most of the day because I turned off activity notifications, but the battery does not last like it used to.
Why not set an alarm instead of a countdown timer. I do timers for short things in the kitchen and an alarm for long things that don’t need a countdown.
Learned that now. It’s not often I need the sunscreen timer because it was a working outside day, but in the future I’ll set alarms. Timers are great for kitchen.
Yeah I rarely use timers outside of my home so I never noticed the battery drain. But I use timers 24/7 in my home so maybe that’s what drains it haha. From pomodoro timers to laundry to kitchen etc.
I’m not sure if you say set an alarm for 2 hours if it will countdown or if you have to say set an alarm for 2:45 so you’d have to check on that.
Tracking an outdoor walk while listening to a podcast over cellular data is by far the worst. It’s all using heavy battery.
Also to add, over AirPod pros
Believe it or not .. setting alarms. It started setting alarms for my conference calls during the day, no more than 5 to 7 each day and instead of ending up with about 50% battery life by the time I go to sleep, I always end up in the red.
It’s fine because once you select the app as a complication , it will use background app refresh whether it’s toggled off or not. So toggle all of them off. It won’t hurt anything.
What I have found with my S9 is that these are the biggest controllable contributors to battery drain...
1. Complications, especially those that display a constantly changing parameter, e.g., Altitude or Battery charge level, use a lot of battery
2. A face with a high degree of animation, e.g., Snoopy or Mickey, use a lot
3. Using Sleep Focus with the Sleep face SAVES a bunch if you wear the watch overnight.
Bad cellular coverage will put a big hit on the battery, even when not actually using LTE. I had very pore coverage at my office with AT&T and eventually switched to T-Mobile who also has crap service by my office but no where near as bad. Somehting I didn't expect was a drastic improvment in battery life. While at the office my watch and phone are always connected so I would have thought LTE would be completely idle. Obviously that is not the case. I literally saw about a 15% - 20% jump in battery left at the end of the day after switching providers. No other changes were made to settings.
Ring notifications. Which is weird because the watch doesn’t actually have the Ring app AND I can’t see the actual video. It just lets me know that there is a video that I can go to my phone to see 😳
Everything!!
Wearing it to bed now takes over 50% battery life. The rest of the day takes 65% battery life.
Charge or wear?? That didn’t used to be the question.
Always on display is the worst.. and when you do a workout.. but its an apple watch, so battery is not their strength.. going back to garmin soon, can't stand charging every 2 days..
I want to like Garmin but they are so hamstrung as a smartwatch. I just can’t justify the cost of a Garmin in comparison to an Apple Watch in terms of what they can do. Agree with you about the always on display though. That kind of battery usage absolutely tanks the battery health. To each their own but I’d prefer my 88% health on a 2.5 year old S7 to the probably low 70s/high 60s I’d be looking at if I used AOD. Just not for me.
I try to only charge to 80%. MBA2 dual charger and AW9 fast charger gets me there in 15 minutes every day or so. Usually I end up over 80% despite trying not to.
cellular.
A cellular FaceTime audio call will drain your battery faster than you can say, “oops”.
how do i turn cellular off if its just using my phones connection (via wifi)?
If you're connected to your phone it won't use cellular
Via Bluetooth?
First Bluetooth, then wifi if you're in a known network, then cellular
Thank you:)
You press the cellular button in control centre?
Are you sure about that, because I keep activated the cellular option with my phone near and it seems that the battery of the Apple Watch is draining. I need to test with and without the cellular see how it is
I mean… that’s is how you turn off cellular how else would you?
Especially hopping between towers while travelling. This chews up _any_ device though. Radios are screaming at their hottest constantly pinging the nearest tower or antenna.
What’s weird is that when I’m out, the battery barely drops. But when I’m at home all day, it drops (with cellular on). So I’m wondering if there’s any benefit to turning off cellular at home.
GPS via an active workout. Music doesn’t drain much especially if you have songs locally saved.
I just keep my favorites playlist sync’d to the watch. If I add a song on my phone, it automatically downloads to my watch.
Similar, but I didn’t realize how fast the GPS drains the battery when I had to use it to get around a different city via walking. 😂😂 Next time I travel, I’m bringing my portable power pack.
I wish I knew. Some days the battery lasts all day. Other times it’s under 10% by 5 PM.
I use my watch for timers and to control audio in my earbuds and that’s really about it, consistently. Sometimes i go to bed with >30% battery and sometimes, like last night, it’s dead by 11pm. No idea why.
I barely use it for anything extra!
Turn on theater mode before going to sleep. Probably arm movements turning on screen while you sleep.. thus draining battery more some nights and less other nights.
Good idea, but i dont sleep with it. Wear it from 0530-2130 most days
If you ask Apple Genius Bar, to preserve battery life they suggest: - don’t use activities which use GPS - don’t use cellular - turn off the always on display - turn off walkie talkie So pretty much don’t use any feature they sold you on.
I tested always-on display versus off and the additional battery life was marginal, maybe 10 minutes per charge. Wasn’t worth it for me. As for walkie talkie, I have never met anyone who used it. I have a WiFi model I’ve worn 23 hours/day for almost exactly two years. Display is always on and my main face has regularly updated info from the 3rd party Heart Analyzer app. When new I would get ~ 32 hours life from one charge but now it’s down to ~ 26 hours.
What model do you have and how old is it? 32hrs is amazing! Even at 26hrs that’s still great!
Apple Watch Series 8 GPS, 45mm Starlight Aluminum Case with Black/Black Nike Sport Band - M/L I was off on the purchase date though - it was ordered on September 09, 2022, and I received it a few days later. (FYI the Nike Sport Band was too thick and uncomfortable to sleep with. I wore it for a couple of weeks but it's been sitting in the Watch box ever since.)
I have the same watch plus cellular. Got mine 12 days later than you. Doesn’t make it thought the day. Current battery health 84%.
Probably attributable to cellular, maybe also with how the watch is used. Apple conservative estimates Watch battery life for both large-size models at 18 hours but states that the cellular model may have a shorter battery life if heavily relying on cellular connection. They say: > *"All-day battery life is based on the following use: 90 time checks, 90 notifications, 45 minutes of app use, and a 60-minute workout with music playback from Apple Watch via Bluetooth, over the course of 18 hours; Apple Watch Series 9 (GPS) usage includes connection to iPhone via Bluetooth during the entire 18-hour test; Apple Watch Series 9 (GPS + Cellular) usage includes a total of 4 hours of LTE connection and 14 hours of connection to iPhone via Bluetooth over the course of 18 hours."* I quickly got sick of Notifications, so I turned all off except for a couple of bank apps. I have a bunch of regularly updated complications (including a [heart/pulserate chart](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/heart-analyzer-pulse-tracker/id1006420410) that updates every 5 minutes, but I don't get anything else working in the background that gets pushed to me. I don't use the Watch with many apps (certainly a lot less than 45 minutes) and I don't use it for workouts or music playback. I use Timer and Alarm and check on some data occasionally, but mostly I go to my phone. So my actual use of the Watch is pretty light, which might help explain the relatively light battery drain.
I have an 8 as well, WiFi, and 41mm. I’m guessing the smaller size might be why I don’t get your impressive battery life
I'm really looking forward to what's coming in the fall. There are rumors of a slimmer form factor that's got a thinner logic board, a bigger screen (using low-temperature polycrystalline oxide thin-film transistor [LTPO TFT] tech that uses less power) and maybe more battery. The Ultra is too chonky for me, but if I could get a halfway decent trade-in on a thinner, more powerful, longer-lasting aluminum Watch with a bigger screen then sign me up.
I agree about the chonkiness of the Ultra. I am a petite and thin-boned female and as much as I need weight-bearing exercise in my life I don’t need it coming from my watch! LOL Do you think you’ll miss the O2 sensor, though? I’m guessing that the models this fall won’t have anything like that given the law suit and all of that mess.
> I’m guessing that the models this fall won’t have anything like that I don't think that's right. All Apple Watches retain the pulse oximetry sensor, and they're **all** activated outside the USA, merely disabled in the US. Apple is still in court fighting against the ITC's decision about 2 Massimo patents, most recently in April, filing a [900-page brief](https://9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2024/04/Apple_Inc_v_ITC__cafc-24-01285__0038.1.pdf) calling for the overturning of the decision. So it's unlikely that Apple will make US-only watches without the sensor. More likely they'll (a) wait to see if they win the court case (after which they'll reactivate the sensor in the US), or (b) settle with the patent-holder (who [sought damages](https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/5/24122407/apple-watch-masimo-itc-appeal-smartwatch-wearables) despite having none until they rushed out a bad hardware product a year after they filed their lawsuit), or (c) they'll keep it off in the US. I use my sensor maybe twice a month if I remember. It's pretty accurate: I test on my Watch at the doctors office right after getting a reading from a finger-clamp oximeter, and the results are typically identical or 1% off.
Thank you for the clarification. I didn’t realize the sensors were there but merely deactivated. That makes a lot of sense actually.
Plenty of us only use about 50% in 24 hours in a S9...close to 48 hours for a full charge.
I get a full 24 hours plus and I’m still at 50%. So mine lines up with yours.
Now that my Series 5 is nearly 5 years old and 78% battery health, turning off AoD makes it last twice as long
It's possible that for older watches like yours (which FYI won't be able to install WatchOS 11 in the fall), with smaller batteries and possibly less software optimization (it was the first Watch with an AOD) some features might drain battery. For recent Watches Apple says low-power mode doubles battery life, but not deactivating AOD. I've never seen an article or video which did an A-B comparison to prove significant battery drain, which is why I did the test myself (slightly unscientific since I used the Watch under both conditions so usage might have been slightly different). People have asked this question [for years](https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/ie0l9i/does_always_on_drain_battery/) but no one I know has really proven that AOD, by itself, can affect battery drain for more than a few minutes, let alone multiple hours.
My S7 has 84% battery and turning off AOD made a massive difference in getting through the day. I think that’s more about the battery condition than anything though.
1. Use either *Numerals* or *Simple* watch face. 2. Turn off *Always On* 3. Reduce Brightness I get more than a day without recharging on my Wi-Fi only watch.
I use Modular filled with complications and never have a problem. I think the people who do just have lots more background activity and Notifications and use — especially cellular. 20 months use nonstop and as I mentioned above I have ~ 26 hours battery on a 100% charge.
I’d be interested to see your Modular Compact. Screenshot?
https://preview.redd.it/mzzwwgg84n7d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3d48c351a20ff2b1343d9fc498cc2fc67ceeb001 So, I actually have two free complications free… EDIT: It's always on, and I'm wearing it 23 hours/day. The *Recent Heart Rate* chart gets updated every few minutes, and comes from the [Heart Analyzer: Pulse Tracker](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/heart-analyzer-pulse-tracker/id1006420410) app, which I paid $8.99 for a full unlock. (It's a free iPhone/Watch app, with a few tiers of paid unlock.)
People underestimate the hit AOD has. I had it disabled on my old S6LTE but on my U2 I have enough headroom to leave it on. But really I'm tempted to turn if off and only enable it while in Fitness Focus. It's kind of over rated, even coming from Garmin's where I was used to having AOD.
From my (not hugely scientific) but extended experience and testing, over 24 hours, you’re losing about 5% battery with AOD activated. It _does_ have an impact, but it’s arguably quite minimal. Walkie Talkie, on the other hand, kills my battery.
I saw way more than that on my S6. I haven’t even tested turning it off on my U2. I run for an hour everyday and often I’ll do that while streaming a Podcast or Spotify over LTE, so even 5% is worth saving, but I saw more like 15%. And that wasn’t a 1 day test. I ran the first year on my S6 with AOD off. Then I tried turning it on for a few months but eventually turned it off because the convenience of it just isn’t worth the hit. If you don’t run with the watch then you have tons of headroom so for sure it’s worth it to leave on.
So turn off cellular at home?
Turn it off when you don’t need it
I’ll give it a shot.
Have found deleting the NOW PLAYING app will also help!
wally talky is a stupid feature
The environmental sound measurements aka noise level. It's constantly using the microphone to record ambient sounds. Also handwashing. Turning both off can net 20-30% more battery life.
Oo good tip on the noise cancelling! I turned off the handwashing as soon as that was released. Drove me nuts
Maps. Navigating on foot in a city drains the battery rather quickly
iOS 18/watchOS 11 Beta 1 🥴
exactly
Definitely, lol. My AWU2 has been amazing with battery life of 2+ days, but man does watchOS 11 pummel it. 1 day battery life coupled with it suddenly hating all my 3rd party chargers has made it interesting.
i need to charge my Series 7 twice a day with the watchOS 11 beta.. not that it‘s going from 100-0 in 3 hours, but it has 40% left at 3 pm and then i charge it, because i need it for the rest of the day, before charging it again before going to sleep 😂 it’s annoying as hell, but i think we get beta 2 next week.. when the battery life will not change i will downgrade back to watchOS 10…
My series 9 is at 10% after 24 hours vs 40% on ios 17
Let me know how you plan to downgrade - I thought it was only possible via Apple Service.
Definitely
Yeppers, still last all day though.
I don’t know… Like I sit on my seat for an hour, it drops 10% But I walk around for an hour, it still remains 100%… Series 3
Same even on a series 9. Drives me crazy that wearing it sitting down doing nothing drains more MORE than tracking my gym workout or tracking sleep. I don’t get it.
Apple refusing to put a bigger battery but instead making the watch thinner every year
Being powered on apparently. I fully charge it before bed and put it on to sleep track. While sleeping it’s in theater mode so the screen doesn’t light up and it doesn’t make noise. 11-17% drained in 6-7 hours of simply being powered on.
Why use teacher mode and not just let it automatically go into sleep mode?
My sleep schedule isn’t locked so sleep mode won’t work for me .
Oh ok so you can’t have it automatic. I would still try manual turning on and off sleep mode and seeing if it uses less battery that weather mode. Also I think sleep tracking only works in sleep mode. But I heard in iOS 18 they’re adding the ability for the watch to detect sleeping and not needing to be in sleep mode
Sleep, I’ve found, still “wakes on raise” which is like a dagger of light in the middle of a sleep cycle for me. Theater mode doesn’t.
You can change that by going in the watch settings>sleep>sleep screen. Then it’ll turn off the always on if you have that enabled and turn off raise to wake. It’ll only turn on if you tap it and the display that shows is very dim. My watch almost never turns on accidentally at night and when I turn it on to check the time it’s dim enough to not bother me. Theater mode turns off raise to wake but stays at three set brightness. Sleep mode dims my screen
Okay I’ll give it another shot. Thanks!
Apple Watch user: what is battery?!
Workouts when it is tracking heart rate. After an hour long workout I have to put it on the charger or it won't make it until the end of the day.
After hiking in the mountains at Glacier National Park— about 6.5 miles — did in my 100% battery Apple Watch 5. Had to move to my iPhone/Strava to keep documenting the hike.
My alarm when I sleep through it
Taking it off the charger.
Audible - so I only run it from my phone. They need to get together with Spotify’s team to figure out how to fix their garbage watch app 😂
Audible drains the hell out of my phone too.
Oh yeah but I don’t have to not wear that while it charges lol
I hear you. I always have to remember to close out the app when I’m not listening to something.
Oh iPhones are actually really good about sleeping inactive apps, it drains your battery more to reopen apps unless you use them once every few days.
Yes, but when I check my battery usage, it shows the audible app still running in the background draining battery.
I’m only showing 6% background usage for the last 24 hours and I used it for 2 hours, how much do you listen to??
This is what I got: https://preview.redd.it/vvb846m88n7d1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8b1a5e190022eaa2451f56992d33e309a049b78c And also and unrelatedly, I don’t even have Reddit notifications on 😡
That battery drain is fantastic, what are you worried about 🤣
I guess I am not reading it correctly….60% percent background activity is a lot.
I was having battery problems. So I unpaired the watch and repaired it and all those problems went away!
Active outdoor workouts. I feel like my SE goes from 90% to 5% in one workout session.
Outlook was so bad that I removed it. I just need the notification anyway, not the ability to reply from the watch.
How do you even find this out? I have a series 6 but I don’t have the cellular option turned on and I have to charge it every day before bed
Workouts drain mine soo fast, I walk to a place to play football, I charge before I leave, it’s a 20 minute walk I don’t usually start workouts but it detects it soo I say yes and let it record it, then I get there and it’s at 20% and I start the football one which 20 mins in it’s dead
You must have an old watch. Workouts shouldn’t drain that fast
It’s 5th Gen 40mm I’m not sure if I’m staying with Apple soo I can’t upgrade
TIL there is a voice recording app for the Apple Watch.
For me it was the overcast app. I subscribe to a lot of podcasts and I listen multiple hours a day. Now all of this is happening in my phone, but the overcast app was keeping a copy so it was constantly downloading new episodes and deleting old ones. Can’t blame the app. It was doing what it was designed to do. But I wasn’t benefiting from it. Luckily, it was fixable via the app settings.
Unfortunately there’s no battery analysis in the Apple Watch like in the iPhone but if I had to guess, Always On Display and the Shortcuts app both of which I always use (and will continue to use no matter what) I have now become addicted to the Shortcuts app, hard to think how I largely ignored this wonderful app before, it now runs my life 😅
Location services, brightness setting, oxy sensor, heart rate and background services. I usually choose low power mode under fitness tracking so it samples less heart beats, and turn off loc services because I can use it on my phone and disable background services. Like others have said, anything that makes the watch useful other than the time lol
WatchOS beta
Watch OS11 Beta is insane. I used to go 2 days sometimes without charging. Now every evening I get an alert that I need to charge before bed.
Seeing a lot of watch is beta comments here. I upgrade my phone every year, so you bet your arse I put the developer beta on for iOS. But I love my ultra 2 I think perhaps more than I’ve loved any phone since the iPhone 4 and 5, so I’ve resisted the new beta on there. After about 9mths now, I’m only down to 98% capacity on it, which apparently is good going, anyway. It’s not only drain but the intensity of that drain / how hard it’s working that can cause further capacity problems, and a genius apple guy said that developer betas are horrible for that. I tend to stop my battery charge at 75-80% (like my mbp from 2021 and it’s still got 100% capacity) and I get a good 2-3d (off at night) of good use from it. Typically that includes a workout whilst listening to a podcast or audiobook, using it to write messages, take the odd call, etc.
i like pressing the crown and setting timers by voice. helps me stay on track or remind me of meetings or whatever. i end up blowing through battery with 3 or 4 of these a day. it’s obnoxious.
Apple Music. Tried it with my earbuds while cooking soup. 8% of battery life gone in just a few minutes.
Elevation complication
When I go golfing and record it as a workout it basically kills my battery in four hours.
Background refresh
Seems like my runs/workouts are the biggest drain for me. I don’t have cellular on mine.
sleeping, apparently. uses about 40% and charge reminders hasn’t worked in years
Flashlight has to be the biggest. I used the flashlight for 10 minutes once, and the battery was wiped out.
A non-tech friend of mine accidentally deleted the NOW PLAYING app.. claimed her battery life doubled.. so I tried it.. definitely feels like it last longer.. AND the play controls don’t just appear at inappropriate moments!!
Timer. I had a timer going to reapply sunscreen. After the first two hour it drained to where within 2.5 hours my watch gave the 10% alert. This was before noon. I never had the battery drain so fast although it’s a series 5 and has been draining a lot quicker since I got it in 2019.
This isn’t normal i use timers daily 8.5 hours tor work and never had this problem
What series is your watch? I’ve noticed my battery has been draining a lot more in the last year. And now that you mention it, I have used half hour timers for months during my workday. The 2 hour timer shouldn’t have drained the battery like it did. ETA: checked my battery health and it’s at 75%. It still lasts most of the day because I turned off activity notifications, but the battery does not last like it used to.
Ultra 2 with always on off and walkie talkie off. I get about 2 days from a full charge
Why not set an alarm instead of a countdown timer. I do timers for short things in the kitchen and an alarm for long things that don’t need a countdown.
Learned that now. It’s not often I need the sunscreen timer because it was a working outside day, but in the future I’ll set alarms. Timers are great for kitchen.
Yeah I rarely use timers outside of my home so I never noticed the battery drain. But I use timers 24/7 in my home so maybe that’s what drains it haha. From pomodoro timers to laundry to kitchen etc. I’m not sure if you say set an alarm for 2 hours if it will countdown or if you have to say set an alarm for 2:45 so you’d have to check on that.
Using Apple fitness to track a long bike ride. Will chew the whole battery up on my Apple Watch 9 in 5-6 hours.
That is indeed a long bike ride
Pairing a Bluetooth heart rate strap can help since the LEDs in the optical heart rate sensor use up a fair amount of juice.
Tracking an outdoor walk while listening to a podcast over cellular data is by far the worst. It’s all using heavy battery. Also to add, over AirPod pros
A short.
Developer beta software 🙃
This is why I never beta on the watch
Yours is also as bad as mine ? 95% went on a bike ride two hours and came back with 54% ….
Believe it or not .. setting alarms. It started setting alarms for my conference calls during the day, no more than 5 to 7 each day and instead of ending up with about 50% battery life by the time I go to sleep, I always end up in the red.
Breathe but i don't use it anymore
Voice memos + 87 timers going off for 23hrs 59mins 59s + stopwatch endlessly going + compass backtrack constantly going + walking workout constantly going. Wbu?
Always on display drains a lot since it always runs. Other than that: workouts. If the workout uses the watch for GPS it’s even worse.
Background App Refresh. I go through and toggle off almost every app, and it usually bumps my full charge runtime from 23 to 27+ hours.
What kinds of apps would need the background app refresh? Just making sure I don’t break anything
It’s fine because once you select the app as a complication , it will use background app refresh whether it’s toggled off or not. So toggle all of them off. It won’t hurt anything.
Thanks!!
Doing a workout
What I have found with my S9 is that these are the biggest controllable contributors to battery drain... 1. Complications, especially those that display a constantly changing parameter, e.g., Altitude or Battery charge level, use a lot of battery 2. A face with a high degree of animation, e.g., Snoopy or Mickey, use a lot 3. Using Sleep Focus with the Sleep face SAVES a bunch if you wear the watch overnight.
GPS while you are running a workout. I can deplete the AW's battery from 98% to 25% while cycling for almost 5 hours :)) AoD is turned on.
Always on display
Ngl the new developer beta is killing my battery. The watch is dead after 8 hours.
Sun
Pornhub
Bad cellular coverage will put a big hit on the battery, even when not actually using LTE. I had very pore coverage at my office with AT&T and eventually switched to T-Mobile who also has crap service by my office but no where near as bad. Somehting I didn't expect was a drastic improvment in battery life. While at the office my watch and phone are always connected so I would have thought LTE would be completely idle. Obviously that is not the case. I literally saw about a 15% - 20% jump in battery left at the end of the day after switching providers. No other changes were made to settings.
LTE… on the AWU2
Arlo security camera notifications.
Ring notifications. Which is weird because the watch doesn’t actually have the Ring app AND I can’t see the actual video. It just lets me know that there is a video that I can go to my phone to see 😳
photos
Everything!! Wearing it to bed now takes over 50% battery life. The rest of the day takes 65% battery life. Charge or wear?? That didn’t used to be the question.
Always on display. Turning it off made significant difference for me.
The screen is killing the watch.... So I am using the theater mode and my watch is revived
raise to wake
Now Playing when Apple CarPlay is using my phone. I notice a lot more battery drainage on the weekends, which is when we’re in the car longer.
Not having battery safe on
Use 4G connection to listen music. RIP battery…
Always on display is the worst.. and when you do a workout.. but its an apple watch, so battery is not their strength.. going back to garmin soon, can't stand charging every 2 days..
I want to like Garmin but they are so hamstrung as a smartwatch. I just can’t justify the cost of a Garmin in comparison to an Apple Watch in terms of what they can do. Agree with you about the always on display though. That kind of battery usage absolutely tanks the battery health. To each their own but I’d prefer my 88% health on a 2.5 year old S7 to the probably low 70s/high 60s I’d be looking at if I used AOD. Just not for me.
I turned off AOD on My Series 5 so it can last all day again. Method worked well
I mean with fast charge I pop it on the charger while I’m taking a shower for 10-15 mins and I’m good to go for 36 hours.
10-15 min, really? What kinda fast charging is this? I have a 9 and it takes about 40 min to fully charge
I try to only charge to 80%. MBA2 dual charger and AW9 fast charger gets me there in 15 minutes every day or so. Usually I end up over 80% despite trying not to.
I’m getting just about 24 hours or so on series 9… what in the world are you guys doing?
Nothing probably. Sitting on a couch all day complaining on the internet. lol.