Spent half the day yesterday walking without a phone or my wallet. Had lunch at McDonald's because Apple Pay was my only payment option and wanted to play safe.

Answered a couple of messages, short replies are the best. Listened to some Spotify. All in all, freedom and free pockets.

Woke up today with 95% battery after a full charge last night so I guess the 1% drain from yesterday was an outlier.

Sleep battery drain update. I charge to 100% before bed every night.

2 days ago, woke up with 99% battery.
Yesterday, woke up with 95% battery.
Right now, woke up with 100% battery.

Trail loop best loop.

Maybe let me put it into perspective.
Even if you do nothing, all the monitoring still goes on in the background. AOD too if you enable it. 1030am to 630pm is an entire working shift. Let's use the same rate and say it's a 36% drain for 16 hours. Then let's half it during sleep and say it's 9% for the remaining 8 hours. That's 45% for 24 hours. In 48 hours, you would have drained 90% and still have 10% battery left.

Then let's check against Apple's battery claims. Apple says it is good for 36 hours of use between charges.
The way I see it, you are still coming out ahead so I would say it is normal.

Where do we go from here then? If battery life is important to you and you don't need constant monitoring during your day, enable the low power mode and turn off AOD. Adjust the watch to how you need it, not default settings.
That should roughly double your time between charges. Of course, we will be very interested in hearing how that works out for you.


On my end, I've been doing observation on the sleep tracking battery drain for an entire week.
What I do is I charge my AWU to 100% right before bed. Sleep focus on. Check the battery levels when I wake up.

Generally notice a 5 - 6% drain during sleep.
But once every 2 to 3 days, my watch shows 100% battery in the morning. Small things like seeing my battery at 100% when I wake up is a great way to start my day.

WatchOS 9.1 is here. Should be with the new advertised low power settings mode which Apple says can extend battery life to 60 hours. Perhaps some of you might get a full week between charges.

Someone can probably go test and report back.

I'm an everything on full blast charge everyday guy.

Just charge everyday and enjoy everything the Watch has to offer.

Sometimes it's not actually for the watch but more for the user.

I'm on Maxis. My phone is on physical sim while my watch is on esim.

Usage update after a couple of weeks use.
I use my AWU as is, without case or screen protectors as it doesn't jive with me. AOD on, cellular, exercise everyday. Basically everything on full blast. Plus wearing it to sleep so the only time I'm without my watch is when I charge it to 100% before bed.

I usually end my day with battery at 50+%, sometimes at 60%.
Feels great as I am able to end the day with plenty of buffer and it charges pretty quickly. Then again I came from an AW3 which takes forever to charge up.

Same thinking here.
Prefer enjoying everything the Ultra has to offer rather than playing who can make their Ultra last the longest game.