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Series 6 Battery Life - How long does your S6 last?

BasicGreatGuy said:
Just got done charging my series 6 SS. It took 1:42 mins from 20%.
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When I lowered my room ambient temperature from 27 to 23 degrees (Celsius), the watch started charging much faster.

The watch seems to slows charging as the battery heats up. Steel is a terrible conductor of heat so I suspect charge rates are slower than Aluminum.
 
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bluegt said:
When I lowered my room ambient temperature from 27 to 23 degrees (Celsius), the watch started charging much faster.

The watch seems to slows charging as the battery heats up. Steel is a terrible conductor of heat so I suspect charge rates are slower than Aluminum.
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And today I learned.. https://www.industrialmetalsupply.com/blog/best-metals-conducting-heat :)
Just from their external appearance I would have thought SS would conduct heater better than the dull aluminum.. how wrong that assumption was.
 
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Had mine on since 5am (1pm now) and its on 80% (started at 100%). So roughly 3% battery per hour. Been using it quite alot today aswell since its my first work day with it. Also used it during my 1hr workout this morning (mostly the stopwatch).

I have pulse graph watch face FYI.

7hr = 20%
Just short of 3% per hour
So 33hr-34hr with above normal use, with quite few features turned on.

Very pleased, the 18hr estimate from apple gotta be extreme usage of the watch..

SS Graphite AW6
Latest software installed
 

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AW6 remind me of the battery life I used for my AW4. Last me near to 36h.
No podcast and email.
Workout in the morning & evening using nike apps. Picture took when I still have 43%.
I just charge before going to bed, and use for the next day evening till the next charge.
 

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I just got my apple watch series 6 last Friday and upgraded from a 2017 Series 3. I noticed the battery is draining A LOT faster than my series 3 did. I even turn off the always on display to see if that would help ( I prefer it that way anyway). Like now, I just took my watch off the charger this morning getting ready for work 7:05 AM when I got to work an hour later, it had dropped down to 99%. I know that's probably normal but my series 3 stay at 100% for over an hour on most days. I know series 6 has more things running like Blood Oxygen sensor stuff but who knows. But over the weekend, I noticed it was dropping faster as well. Maybe it's IOS Watch 7 or something. I have applecare + so if I don't think the drain is normal, I will take it to apple.

Still LOVE the watch though and its a good upgrade from the series 3.

Update

I noticed my watch automatically connects to Wifi. Maybe when I am traveling in non wifi areas it's still automatically looking to connect to a network, draining the battery some. It's been off the charger for an hour and a half with like little use. Already dropped to 98% SMH.
 
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I can report for the first time since Series 0 my 40mm would have lasted all night. I have the Series 6 and updated to watchOS 7.1....I still had 46% after 14 hours....and with my series 5 I had to recharge at least twice.....so now I might need to find a comfortable band for sleeping and look at doing that now :)
I do have the AOD on but I have noise and Hey Siri turned off (I had to do that due to battery concerns with my series 5)....
 
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So I am a bit confused on how handwashing works so I know where to keep it on or turn it off for battery purposes. I heard it detects you washing your hands be your motion and by listening for water coming from a sink. If it's listening then I might turn that off too cause I feel like it might be apart of the battery drain.
 
ShadowGuardian87 said:
So I am a bit confused on how handwashing works so I know where to keep it on or turn it off for battery purposes. I heard it detects you washing your hands be your motion and by listening for water coming from a sink. If it's listening then I might turn that off too cause I feel like it might be apart of the battery drain.
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I turned off handwashing because I usually do jagged back and forth movements when I wash my hands - not the wrist rolling that activates the handwashing. Yes, audio is a big part.

I really didn't notice a battery difference with that on vs off.

For me, AOD off, handoff off, and siri "listen" off has been the biggest changes to battery life for me. I notice a lot more % left at the end of the day when I have these off. I also have brightness on its lowest (good enough for me).
 
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My wife and I have noticed that these watches heat up a lot more when charging vs our S5 watches. That small increase in charging speed definitely has a noticeable heat factor. While I do think batteries today handle this better than in the past, it definitely is going to have a wear and tear effect - no way to control it tho.

My S5 was used daily and nightly for a year and it had 100% health. So I'm not too worried about 1-2 years of use.

The charging seems to super speed to 85% then slow down after that.

I charged to 100% last night, woke up at 5:30am with 96% and at 7:42am I'm sitting at 89%. I'm pretty happy with this battery life.
 
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Upgraded to watchOS 7.0 and battery would run to 15% by the end of the day. It used to be at around 40%
First I tried the unpair repair route, no real change after 2 days
when 7.01 came out, I off loaded all but a few apps, keeping Cardiogram, Dexcon Follow, OTP Auth, Ten Percent, Toyota. I added Battery Grapher
After loading 7.0.1 now off charger at 8am on wrist till 11:30pm (no real change in on time), the last 2 days I’m at 52-55% at 11:30pm.
Next on the block off load a couple more and lets see before I start to add them back on
Thanks for the tips.
 
BigMcGuire said:
I turned off handwashing because I usually do jagged back and forth movements when I wash my hands - not the wrist rolling that activates the handwashing. Yes, audio is a big part.

I really didn't notice a battery difference with that on vs off.

For me, AOD off, handoff off, and siri "listen" off has been the biggest changes to battery life for me. I notice a lot more % left at the end of the day when I have these off. I also have brightness on its lowest (good enough for me).
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Thanks. I have turned off AOD, Handwashing and made sure background app refresh was off. Will see how that goes lol.
 
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ShadowGuardian87 said:
Thanks. I have turned off AOD, Handwashing and made sure background app refresh was off. Will see how that goes lol.
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I don't turn off any background app refreshing, but yeah, AOD, Siri, and handoff seem to be the biggest battery savers to me. I imagine background app refreshing would help a lot. I'll have to look into that on apps I don't care about or need.

Never hurts to set watch up as new tho (unpair/pair) - I've found this to fix so many weird problems where battery just burns. I've never lost any of my achievements/medals/exercise data doing this either.
 
Came home, roughly 13hrs since full charge: 65%

Considering I'll go to sleep in about 3hours (i wake up early to workout) im going to have >=50% battery after a full day use (2/3 of day awake aka 8hr sleep). Very pleased! Had 100% uptime except for the gym shower in the morning but that barely lasted 5min (yes its water resistant but i dont want any chemicals from the shampo to f*** up the seals)..
 

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Today I went on a Roadtrip with my GF and we both started with 82% and after 5h we both had 62% left. Idk what happened that we both lost 20% in 5h which means 4%/h. The last days I had like 2.5%/h. The only thing that changed, I installed waterminder and yesterday I let it run to 0%...
 
I would love to know how much those apps affect the battery life. I always feel like they have a noticeable impact because I install them (like waterminder) then notice the battery less, uninstall, and it seems better. But it could just be because I'm using my watch less. Would be nice to get an actual battery use % per app like we do with the iPhone.
 
I now switched off water minder notifications on AW, I thought I receive these messages from my iPhone idk. anyone else using water minder and has a increase of battery usage?
 
jdb8167 said:
Preliminary results of my experiment. It is now 21 hours and 20 minutes after a full charge. My watch just hit 50%. This shows with many of the new Series 6 and watchOS 7 features turned off, I can get better than Series 5 battery life. This makes me happy.

The fact that I can probably get over 40 hours says the problem is software related which is easy enough to work around. Next step is to find out what is causing the battery drain.
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Ok, I’m much more comfortable reporting that my Series 6 is getting significantly better battery life than my Series5 did with one caveat. I’ve turned off Blood Oxygen when sleeping and Theater mode. Background SpO2 is on though. Sleep tracking is set to automatic and everything else new in watchOS 7 is also at default settings.

Today after I woke up and after over 23 hours of use, I was at 61%. I’m both using the new OS (obviously with a Series 6) and sleep tracking. The estimate from Battery Grapher (estimate was reported as OK) was another 21 hours of use. I didn’t let it run down and decided to charge while getting ready for the day this morning. This is my normal usage about 80% of the time. I almost never let the watch run down to less than 40% and the number of times I’ve let any watch I’ve owned go below 10% can be counted on one hand.

In the next few days when I can conveniently schedule it, I’ll actually let it go to 10% or so to get a better sense of battery life over then whole run down cycle.

Edit: Just for completeness, this is a Series 6 44 mm with watchOS 7.0.1. The new OS might have improved my battery life as well.
 
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xxBlack said:
Today I went on a Roadtrip with my GF and we both started with 82% and after 5h we both had 62% left. Idk what happened that we both lost 20% in 5h which means 4%/h. The last days I had like 2.5%/h. The only thing that changed, I installed waterminder and yesterday I let it run to 0%...
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If a simple app like a water reminder is using up that much battery, just get rid of it and find another. Water reminders can be scheduled which means they should take up pretty much 0% of your battery. If it’s using battery, the developer did something wrong.
 
idk if its waterminder but its the last app I've installed. I can't explain how I drained 20% battery in 5h while driving car. Me and my GF both had the same battery and we both installed water minder on Saturday
 
Waterminder is not good.. I always go to the battery and see which apps are using more battery percentage for the buck.. apps that only use a few minutes but take a big percent of that hour usage.. so it will affect both Iphone and Apple Watch battery life.. That app uses a lot in the background for a few minutes worth.. I deleted the app and the battery drop savings was noticeable.. If you can get just the apps that use minimal battery usage, then the watch will last very long.. Even Autosleep uses less battery..
 
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Some apps use background app usage like crazy.. so try to remove those.. find another app or forgo the water reminder.. get an app that justs remind you like Streaks or something..
 
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