How's WatchOS 4 battery life on a Series 1? Should I keep mine on 3.2.3?

[RyCan3]

My wife’s watch is doing the same thing. It started draining pretty bad before updating to os4. She makes it about 8 hours before it hits 15%. She used to be able to go the whole day.

 

[wgaller]

I just upgraded to Series 1 last week, on iOS 4 my watch is still at 50% after 12 hours. Very pleased.

 

[Gman1967]

Just curious from other Series 1 owners who have updated to WatchOS 4 if I should make the jump or keep my Series 1 on 3.2.3? How's the battery life?

Sucks that we can't try out the update for a few days / weeks and downgrade if we don't want it like we can on the iPhone (at least before Apple stops signing the old iOS version).

Thank you for the input

So... I’m joining the conversation late. what did you decide?

I had a Series 0 and all around performance degraded sharply in the months since updating to 4.2. Battery life dropped immediately to so days that used to end with 40% or higher were ending with 20-30%
By bedtime. Eventually I would get the 10% warning by 7pm. My touch screen and buttons became less and less responsive and the silk screened buttons within apps stopped responding. Even the scribble field and mic button in messaging stopped working. Apple could find NO hardware problems but eventually swapped me out to a Series 1.

Week 1 or the Series 1 I stayed at 3.2.3 and got stellar performance although I missed a few aesthetic advantages of 4.2. Then I updated and battery life was the first thing to go. A few day later I started to have the same problems and it took several scratch installs to at least improve responsiveness.

Apple has sent me another replacement which I am keeping at 3.2.3. It is 3:47pm eastern standard time and I am currently at 18% battery with the attached usage. The other watch running 4.2 is not due back until 1/16. I figure I will play with both to get a really accurate idea of the pros and cons of 4.2 vs 3.2.3 on the Series 1

 

[Hal~9000]

So... I’m joining the conversation late. what did you decide?

I ended up staying on 3.2.3. Just saw too many posts throughout the forum on how WatchOS 4 decreased battery life for earlier models and I didn't want to risk updating.

Learned over the years not to trust Apple's software updates on older devices and instead to keep my products on the original software version that they came with. This way they aren't struggling to run software which was really built for more advanced hardware and their performance is the same as the first day I purchased it

 

[gigaguy]

Series 1 and Series 2 same guts? Thought I read the processor is different in Series 2. I'm happy with the Series 1 I just got for the price of 2 Apple bands.

 

[macdragonfl]

I am running a series 0, I also run WOS4 beta's I have better battery life than ever. Here at 14% left. The only thing I do is to hard reset (not power down) both watch and phone after each update. Battery the first day or so be worse just as any other iOS device and then it works itself out. I change no settings and allow the os to run at its defaults. There is also a 45 minute workout included in the stats.