Watch OS 7 Update and battery drain

Anyone else having battery drain since updating their watch to watch OS7. I have an Apple Watch series 4 and have never had battery issues before. Did the update and the battery drains in hours. I have restarted the watch and unpaired and paired again and nothing helps. Anyone else having this problem? Have you found a solution?
Thanks for any help.

There’s some discussion of watchOS 7 battery life in this thread:

I have only had it installed for a couple of days, but the battery does seem to be draining more quickly. I will need to keep an eye on it to see for sure. I also ha e a series 4.

I’m not sure if it applies to the watch but I have experienced faster than normal battery drain on my phones and tablets for a brief period after every major OS upgrade. I’m guessing it is similar to a Spotlight indexing operation.

Had my series 4 on for 10 hours and showing 81% battery left. Fairly light usage today.

I’ve been experiencing similar battery drain issues and like you I found that re-starting and re-pairing didn’t help.

This morning, based on comments in a couple of other forums, I tried re-pairing, but setting up as a new watch rather than restoring from backup.

This does seem to have improved the battery drain significantly. It’s now late afternoon and the watch still has around 60% remaining even after a long workout this morning, whereas yesterday it was pretty much flat by this point.

The only word of caution I’d offer is that this process may have other unintended side effects. For example, I haven’t been able to re-enable watch unlock on my Mac at this point.

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hey
Same issues here. Only re-pairing and setting up as a new watch solved the problem. Now I also can’t setup my watch to unlock my iMac. Have you found a solution?
Thanks
Rolf

Yes, also seeing fast battery drain with new watch OS and watch 5. I’m charging 3 times a day to get by until there’s an update.

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I’ve not had terrible battery life on Watch OS 7, but it’s not been as good as it was on OS 6.

I tried rebooting the watch, etc.

What does seem to have made a difference is that I’ve gotten rid of some unused, not working apps on the watch. (Particularly, the Toyota remote connect app, Dark Sky and the MLB app.) The battery is draining at a rate similar now to what it did before.

It sort of makes sense that there might be some un-updated apps on the watch causing issues. I guess my thought is to delete anything you’re not using to see if that makes a difference.

I had about 3-4 days of bad battery drain that I blamed on re-indexing after upgrading, but the last couple days have been stellar (67% at 10 hour mark, with a one hour walking workout). Keep in mind, I’ve had to perform a double-button reboot twice Wednesday and Thursday, so you may need to perform this as necessary.

I’m having the same issue, before the update I only needed to charge once a day but now I do it 2 or 3 times a day. I’ll try the reboot to see if that helps.
Thanks for sharing.

Best Regards,

Chris

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Yes. Maybe more operationally annoying is that the battery complication can read 20 or 30 percent and the watch dies. It’ll linger in the high 90s, gradually decrease, but if the battery dies while showing that much left in the tank, it’s so uncalibrated that it’s misleading.

Ultimately this cost me a 177 day perfect streak with move and stand this past week. I struggle to out my disappointed about that into words.

I have minimal 3rd party apps–all but one around health tracking: Peloton, Virgin Pulse (likely to go), Sleep Cycle, SleepWatch, WaterMinder, and Carrot. WaterMinder and Carrot are set as complications.

Yesterday I started exercising with it in the 50s. It died after about an hour. I just got off the phone with a senior advisor and we ran a couple diagnostics. It shut down with 53% battery. They are sending me a new watch.

This is the second new watch they’ve sent me within a month. Both with the same issue. Series 4 btw.

There’s an update for 7.0. Maybe that’ll fix it.

My battery life seems back to normal after the patch update.

Best Regards,

Chris

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The patch update didn’t fix all my problems (no GPS tracking, and terrible watch battery life) so I’m doing this today, ugh and it’s taking forever. I have too many apps LOL!

If you’re missing Workout GPS routes or Health data after updating to iOS 14 and watchOS 7 – Apple Support