Apple Watch users complain about extremely short battery life, update supposed to bring improvement

Over the past few days, there have been increasing reports on the Apple Support Forum, on Reddit and on X, according to which the battery life of the Apple Watch is not as nearly as long as before the update to watchOS 10.1. All compatible Apple Watch models appear to be affected, regardless of whether it is an Apple Watch Series 6 or an Apple Watch Ultra 2.

According to some user reports, the battery is sometimes drained after just two hours and there are also notable issues with charging: some smartwatches do not even charge above 50%, while others even lose energy when connected to the charger. In order to extend runtimes at least a little, some users have resorted to drastic measures such as removing all widgets, deactivating a number of apps and the always-on display, and activating all energy management features.

However, these workarounds severely restrict the functionality of the Apple Watch and can hardly be viewed as permanent solutions. Apple supposedly shares this view, as MacRumors was able to get ahold of an internal memo which stated that these problems would be fixed "soon" with a software update, but without giving any further details about the cause or expected release of this update. In view of the sheer number of user complaints, those who have not yet installed watchOS 10.1 are advised to skip this OS version and wait for the release of watchOS 10.2, which is expected to fix these battery problems.