For what it’s worth, my S4 has gotten through a day’s use easily up until OS6…now I get the battery warning in the evening with the same usage.
The only thing I had changed was turning the noise detection thing on, so my guess it that’s impacting battery life. I turned it back off now so I’ll see if that improves things or not in the coming days.
Agreed. There hasn’t been any “fiddle factor” for me because there’s really nothing to fiddle with. The only difference is the always on screen which, by its very nature, cannot be fiddled with 
I did a few things to help: turned down the brightness, turned off auto-syncing from Overcast, made sure all my music playlists were synced and not streaming.
I don’t think any of that is going to give me my 3 hours, but it’s usually convenient for me to put in the charger for a bit during a workday. The vast majority of the time this will be a non-issue, but it’ll be a pain when I have an early travel day.
All of that to say, it’s worth it. I LOVE the always on screen. If I get an always on screen and have to put it on the charger for 45 minutes a day, I can live with that. It’s frustrating because usually this stuff gets better whereas both the 4 and 5 have been a regression from 0-3 on the battery life front.
Your iPad 3 comparison is apt, if not depressing… I had that device too! 
Oh, I also turned noise detection off after having turned it on initially! I guess battery life is more important than my hearing 
My Series 5 battery life seems identical to my Series 4. Maybe it depends on the watch face that’s always on (I’m using California.)
As did I… and of course version 4 came out a few months later and moved to lightning. Just my (our!) luck!
I went Mini right after that and didn’t go back to full size until 10.5" Pro.
Side note: I just realized you are TJ Luoma of Episode 181, 321, and 493 fame 
I’m a lay elder at my church who regularly teaches/preaches so I’ve enjoyed your episodes!
If this is the case, then I’ll definitely be holding out for the S6. I’ve been going back and forth, but these battery reports (as the days wear on) are a bit disconcerting.
I had the iPad 3 and remembered it performing well enough. What was terrible though was the weight: at 662g it weighed more than the current 12.9" iPad Pro does today!
My recollection, which may be weak, was that the biggest problem was how quickly apps went “out of memory” if you switched away… presumably because it was working so hard to push all the pixels.
Goodness, I didn’t realize that. Amazing how far we’ve come.
Thank you, that’s very nice to hear. There’s a lot of us around the Mac-nerd realm, aren’t there?
Update: pulled off the charger at 5:30am today, no started workouts on the watch, 15% when I dropped on the charger at 9:45. They do want us to workout, right? 
I don’t know if you’ve been following but Apple Twitter has been losing its mind over this
I was listening to a couple of podcasts and all the users who had problems had cellular Watches. And I just saw this:
John Siracusa mentioned in ATP that his wife had been having battery issues on her S4 paired with her new iPhone, he thinks it could be a iOS13 issue in this case. I’ve not had any battery issues on my S4, but I’ve got a friend in FL that IS having battery drain issues. So it’s hard to spot what really the issue is.
Same here.
I think it is to some degree related to the watch face. Modular is sucking my battery. Meridian and California work just fine.
With two workouts of about 30-60 minutes each and some occasional usage, I end up with 50% battery at 9 pm in the evening after unplugging it from power at about 6 am. Modular gets me down to 30%. I have the WiFi model. No cellular.
I am fine with that.
I have an Apple Watch series 5, and have had suboptimal battery performance (I came from Series 4). I have tried several changes to improve battery life, including turning off noise detection, using the California watch face (with dark background), and turning off Always On (which largely defeats the advantage of the Series 5).
Of these options, foregoing Always On gave the best improvement (down to 20-25% after 15 hours with no workouts). This is OK, I guess, but not nearly as good as my old Series 4.
FInally, I tried turning Always On back on, but turning off Raise To Wake. This has made a great difference, with battery only down to 45-50% after 15 hours.
To make this configuration tolerable, I am using the infographic face with black background, with most complications reporting data (battery, steps, temp, wind velocity, calendar, etc.) so I can see the time, along with lots of other information, all the time. With this setup, the Always On display is enough for most purposes, for most of the day.
When I need to interact with the watch or see other data, I have to tap the screen. While this is a bit of a PITA, it’s not as bad as I had feared —especially since I only need to do this occasionally (since I have been strategic about the complications on my main watch face).
This “solution” is still suboptimal, and I’m counting on a software fix for the ultimate solution, but it’s great not to be looking for a charger all day.
Thanks for your input, and I find it surprising that turning off raise to wake has resulted in so much extra battery life. I’ve been holding off on purchasing a S5 because of reports like yours.
Put my watch on at 7.30am and I’ve just had to charge it before I go out to swim. It gave me a 10% warning at 6.30pm. Surely that’s not correct.