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What's your battery life like on Watch 9 and Ultra 2.

I don’t know how are people getting 3-4 days of battery life. I barely get 48 hours while doing nothing. No gps, no workouts, very few notifications per day, no calls through the watch, no music playing with headphones. The only things that are on are Cellular and AOD is on. Now I turned off cellular to see if that helps. With cellular off I am at around 33% left in 36 hours. Slightly better but still pathetic. This is on Ultra 2 that has zero apps installed.
 
akidokraja said:
I don’t know how are people getting 3-4 days of battery life. I barely get 48 hours while doing nothing. No gps, no workouts, very few notifications per day, no calls through the watch, no music playing with headphones. The only things that are on are Cellular and AOD is on. Now I turned off cellular to see if that helps. With cellular off I am at around 33% left in 36 hours. Slightly better but still pathetic. This is on Ultra 2 that has zero apps installed.
Click to expand...
Check your background refresh settings, for all apps
 
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jz0309 said:
Check your background refresh settings, for all apps
Click to expand...
Thanks. I just turned it off. Let’s see. I am thinking - is it possible that iPhone that is connected to AW could drain the battery of AW. I do have hundreds of apps and everything is fully enabled and battery of my iPhone has never been great but I understand why. Could iPhone drain influence the AW battery drain. I never seen anyone talk about this.
 
akidokraja said:
Thanks. I just turned it off. Let’s see. I am thinking - is it possible that iPhone that is connected to AW could drain the battery of AW. I do have hundreds of apps and everything is fully enabled and battery of my iPhone has never been great but I understand why. Could iPhone drain influence the AW battery drain. I never seen anyone talk about this.
Click to expand...
Sure, they do talk to each other ;)

A couple of my observations:
. I when I upgraded my Ultra 1 to watchOS 10 it installed the News app as a widget and it started “fetching”. I don’t use that app so deleted it from my phone.
. After i setup my Ultra 2, as new, it installed all the apps that have a watch app from my phone. As I don’t use 3rd party apps on my U2, I deleted all of them.
. I check every app for its background refresh settings and have it enabled only for those I care about.

U2 battery life for me is better, U1 after 38hrs of usage was around 25-30%, on U2 is looks it’s around 35-38%.
 
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After having my ultra2 for 3 days I did a check. I started at 100%, did a 1 hour outdoor walk 2 days and was at 23% 54 hours later. I always had my phone with me and didn’t do anything else other than normal daily activity. I did notice the improvement of sensors over my s4 in that my VO2 max went up 1 and cardio recovery went up about 6 numbers. I didn’t change but my watch did.
 
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Thirio2 said:
After having my ultra2 for 3 days I did a check. I started at 100%, did a 1 hour outdoor walk 2 days and was at 23% 54 hours later. I always had my phone with me and didn’t do anything else other than normal daily activity. I did notice the improvement of sensors over my s4 in that my VO2 max went up 1 and cardio recovery went up about 6 numbers. I didn’t change but my watch did.
Click to expand...
AOD on or off?
 
Ultra 2 is outstanding and even better than my ultra 1. Now it’s settle down, the battery life is getting better and betterl I went out last night having charged the watch to 100% and it stayed at 100% for two hours. After seven hours, it was at 94%. I’m not running many widgets though but everything is switched on.
I have to say it was very light usage though. Just a couple of text messages.
 
akidokraja said:
I don’t know how are people getting 3-4 days of battery life. I barely get 48 hours while doing nothing. No gps, no workouts, very few notifications per day, no calls through the watch, no music playing with headphones. The only things that are on are Cellular and AOD is on. Now I turned off cellular to see if that helps. With cellular off I am at around 33% left in 36 hours. Slightly better but still pathetic. This is on Ultra 2 that has zero apps installed.
Click to expand...
I've been ill so haven't recorded any workouts in the past few days and I could easily get another day out of this by the looks of it. I have mobile data enabled, AOD enabled and all background refresh enabled.

incoming-9DC7984B-8782-4A1A-A0E1-A1A16BD4FDAE.png
 
AOD was on, although I wear a long sleeve shirt for sun protection. Watch is mostly factory default settings. This brings up a question; how do you turn off night mode? That “improvement “ is the thing I hate most on the new OS. have thought about turning AOD off to see if that bypasses night mode.
 
Thirio2 said:
AOD was on, although I wear a long sleeve shirt for sun protection. Watch is mostly factory default settings. This brings up a question; how do you turn off night mode? That “improvement “ is the thing I hate most on the new OS. have thought about turning AOD off to see if that bypasses night mode.
Click to expand...
Try iPhone Watch app --> My Faces --> choose a face.

About half way down there is typically a 'Night Mode' area (depends on the face). You should have Auto - Off - On options.

-
 
I got 68 hrs on my Ultra 2. I always buy two watches every two years so that when one needs to be charged, I simply wear the other. I did the same with the Ultra 2. I did that mostly because they would last me 1.5 days on a charge. Now just about 3 days on one charge is getting better, Maybe in two years I won't think about buying two watches because the battery will last a week.

I do not use AOD.
 
jz0309 said:
Sure, they do talk to each other ;)

A couple of my observations:
. I when I upgraded my Ultra 1 to watchOS 10 it installed the News app as a widget and it started “fetching”. I don’t use that app so deleted it from my phone.
. After i setup my Ultra 2, as new, it installed all the apps that have a watch app from my phone. As I don’t use 3rd party apps on my U2, I deleted all of them.
. I check every app for its background refresh settings and have it enabled only for those I care about.

U2 battery life for me is better, U1 after 38hrs of usage was around 25-30%, on U2 is looks it’s around 35-38%.
Click to expand...

Good advice. I have used iOS stuff for about 10 years so I am used to background refresh. One of the 1st things I did with AWU2 was delete all of the app loaded when it paired with my iPhone that I could see no use for on the iPhone. Audible, Apple Music, Youtube, etc. I kept apps with useful notifications. Patreon, AeroWeather, Flight Radar 24. and weather apps with alerts. Weather Apps do work in the background mainly to keep track of your GPS location for local area weather alerts. Hello Weather is the closest weather App I have found as a replacement for the badly missed Dark Sky App.
 
M33-1 said:
That is incorrect. If Watch cellular didn’t use any power when it’s connected to your phone, then Apple would not have put a software switch in the control center to manually turn it on and off. Even when connected to your phone with cellular turned on, on the Apple Watch, the Apple Watch consumes more power because it is waiting for the phone to disconnect so it can turn on and connect to cellular.

Turning off this feature will save power on the watch.
Click to expand...
The switch is also there as you may not want cellular on. Not to save power. You might want it off so you don’t incur charges. You may want it off as you are at a wedding and don’t want calls. You may be out of range of your phone and don’t want it to be on drawing power.

The switch doesn’t exist for the sole reason of power saving.
 
My Ultra 2 can go 4 days without charging, but I'm a very light user. I have always on screen set to the brightest level.

Edit: I don't wear my watch when I'm sleeping. I can't really read it in the dark, so I just put it on the table, face down.
 
Last edited:
Always on uses very little power as it reduces the refresh rate from 60 times per second (60hz) to 1 (1hz) and thus means a LOT less power needed.

But the power required depends on the face as remember. It’s OLED so only the actual pixels in use are lit up and powered.
 
After 5 cycles or so on AWU2 I average around 60-62hrs from 100% to 20%. This is with AOD off, AFib history on (for more frequent HRV measurements. I wear it 24/7 and average 30 mins GPS workout and 30 min strength workout a day. Not great not terrible coming from Garmin 965.
 
Killbynumbers said:
I got 68 hrs on my Ultra 2. I always buy two watches every two years so that when one needs to be charged, I simply wear the other. I did the same with the Ultra 2. I did that mostly because they would last me 1.5 days on a charge. Now just about 3 days on one charge is getting better, Maybe in two years I won't think about buying two watches because the battery will last a week.

I do not use AOD.
Click to expand...
Alright, billy big bollocsks.
 
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Anyone using the Ultra 2 in standalone mode? I mean active cellular connection without having the iPhone nearby?
How long does it reach? Is it possible to have:
* Spot tracking (2h) including active AM streaming via cell
* 9to5 Job with active cell connection and having 2x 5min calls

Or will the battery die before being home again?
 
Apple_Robert said:
AOD uses a lot of battery. Unless constantly needed, turn it off and you will get 20-30% more battery use.
Click to expand...
I have AOD on and am 60 hours in with 14% left. I think thats a long time for the convenience to see watch from any angle.

With AOD off I can probably get 4 days of battery if your comment is true but why? It takes under 2 hour to charge the watch form 0-100%
 
Lucas Curious said:
I have AOD on and am 60 hours in with 14% left. I think thats a long time for the convenience to see watch from any angle.

With AOD off I can probably get 4 days of battery if your comment is true but why? It takes under 2 hour to charge the watch form 0-100%
Click to expand...
My comment was to the people complaining about battery life. My comment applies to the Series as well.
 
I think I can easily charge it every 3rd day. AOD, exercise 45 minutes regularly, view mail and messages as they come in. I do not wear it to sleep. No cellular, 77% day 1, high 40% day 2, 19% then goes in low power mode end of day 3.
 
danpass said:
Currently at 20% battery, an elapsed time of 60 hours.

So this Ultra 2, normal power mode, sleep tracking on, no AOD, no cell, minimal workout (working on that lol), is averaging about 1.3% per hour.

I figure that charging every other evening, between 8-10pm sort of thing, will be a smooth charging habit while still leaving a full day of use in case one forgets to charge.

-
Click to expand...
"Last charged to 100% Sat 9:41pm"

Now at 2%, that's officially 72 hours.

-
 
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