Cellular Watch with No Carrier

[macsound1]

I have an Apple Watch Series 4 Cellular.
I bought it used and have never connected it to a cellular connection.
In Settings> Cellular is shows No Sim & No Connection.

My question is around battery life based on where I am during the day and I'm thinking it has to do with cellular, but I have no data to back up my theory.

I work from home 2 days a week and am in the office 3 days a week.
On days when I'm in the office, my Watch dies about 3x faster than when I'm at home. But I work in a brick building and am thinking the accelerated draining of battery has something with the watch trying to connect to cellular but having trouble because that's the only difference I can see between home and work.

Anyone know anything about this?

 

[jz0309]

I’ve had cellular AW since my S4 and never had a plan. When cellular is off, it doesn’t use any power.
In your scenario, it could be that AW is trying to connect to wifi, or to your phone via BT (out of range?). Went know what else might be different in use cases between at work and home, but it’s not cellular

 

[Howard2k]

I’ve had cellular AW since my S4 and never had a plan. When cellular is off, it doesn’t use any power.
In your scenario, it could be that AW is trying to connect to wifi, or to your phone via BT (out of range?). Went know what else might be different in use cases between at work and home, but it’s not cellular

That's my guess too - availability of BT connection to phone is a big thing.

 

[waw74]

In theory, it only powers on the radios that it needs, and it does that in order of least power used. So bluetooth is always on. If it can't find your phone via BT, it will power up the wifi. If it can't find wifi then it will power on cellular.

at the office is your phone in the "same" spot as home? like your pocket. Or do you put it in a desk drawer or cabinet, it might be having to use more power to get the bluetooth through whatever the phone is stored in. It could even be the difference in your desktop thickness and material. Or if there's extra 2.4ghz something at work, meaning the watch has to work harder to get over the extra noise. Wifi, bluettooth, and quite a few other things run in the 2.4 spectrum.

or if you leave your phone at your desk, you may wander more when in the office, going down the hall to another office.

 

[macsound1]

Thanks for all the comments. Really appreciate it.
I don't place my phone in any different spot at work vs home, but being an office, there are waaaaay more WiFi access points than at home. Home is really just 1, at work, there are 4 in the room I'm in, 2 of which are above my head, and about 50 in the office overall.
I hadn't thought about 2.4ghz noise being an issue, but I get that now that you brought it up.
Many thanks! I think this is solved