Prior to the update to watchOS 2, battery use was very consistent at about 4% an hour during the day. Put watch on at say 6AM and by 11 PM battery would be down to something close to 30%. That was with OS 1.01.
Since the upgrade to watchOS2, battery use has been running about 10% an hour, roughly double or so the rate. Put watch on at 6AM and now at 2:30 PM its down to 16%.
Anyone else seeing this level of change?
Yes, I'm seeing the same level of battery drain. Probably shouldn't have been so quick to install a developer release, but I don't have a spare watch to play with. I'm surprised at how dramatic the difference is and can only hope for the next prerelease to come out as soon as possible.
Given the change in functionality and emphasis on local operating mode, I am not surprised. In fact, I expected this.
There are no native apps yet, so this level of change is higher than one might expect. Its more likely beta related than related to native apps.
I just noticed I am down to 24% in about 8 hours. No other changes now I wish I had waited.
Sure have, but this is the nature of pre-release software. The beta is bloated and isn't final. These are not indicative of how watchOS 2 will operate come the fall.
Yes and this is also not the first beta. We developer know this already from former iOS betas. After 1-2 betas the battery drain and performance is again like it should be.
But nearly all of us use the devices also private. The battery of the watch was much better than older phones. Now it is so worse that you can use the watch only for development and put it then on the charger. And I am also a little bit worried if this is good for the battery also when it needs so much energy in such a short time. Maybe someone can give us some information why the watch needs now so much battery power even without using native apps.
I had the same issue with battery drain on day one - after 7 hours I had only about 10% battery. But I used Siri about more than 10 times and scribbled a little bit.
Today on day two I had more than 70% battery left after 6 hours - which is quite good :-) The first hour I was all the time on 100% then it droppped to 99% which I was asthonished about :-p But i didn't used Siri or Scribbles just read notifications I recieved, checked the time and used navigation for 5 minutes.
Don't know if the difference is just because of Siri and Scribble or maybe some setup processes were in background on day one.
Let's see how the battery is draining the next days.
I also noticed a significant reduction is battery longevity but given the other symptoms I have (delayed haptics and general reduced responsiveness) I'm assuming that there are some innefficient CPU usage going on that will be fixed as the beta evolves. not too worried as yet, still excited about the potential of native apps : )
I took my watch off the charger at 0630 this am....left it upside down so it wouldn't turn on...and it's now past 10 and at 95%...I think the battery issue really is due to increased sensitivity on wrist raise...I've had the watch since the week it came out and the screen turning on all the time is the first thing I noticed with WatchOS 2...yesterday by this time it was at like 50%
I noticed now that if I use the photo albums watchface battery drains fast again but with the chronograph watchface not :-)
Just a note here: all of Apples watch apps are now "native". So yes, there are native apps.
Apple can always do what they want. They had native apps there before, or OW the watch wouldnt tell time, count steps and a host of other things. That part is mostly unchanged with the new OS, and there are likely zero outside apps yet that are native (unless Apple invited some firm for special cases).
Apple may have added new native apps, but that list is short too as well I believe.
After a reboot or two, its seems better late yesterday and today. Testing watch apps clearly uses battery, and there has been a lot of that here.
I am at 61% today after about 8 hours, which is around 5% an hour.
One thing I am seeing here is that the time required to update the watchOS app can be very long after the iOS app is installed and running. It can take almost 60 seconds for a very simple watch app. That process also seems to eat up a lot of watch battery.
I am seeing the same kind of battery drain. I would expect things to get better though over the beta releases.
