A new watchOS update is on the way to fix Apple Watch battery drain issues
Have you been affected?
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If you’ve been experiencing poor battery life on yourApple Watch 9or an older model sincewatchOS 10.1rolled out, you should know that help is on the way – andAppleis preparing a fix in a forthcoming software update.
An internal Apple memo, sent to Apple Authorized Service Providers and seen byMacRumors, says that a fix for battery drain is “coming soon”. However, the memo doesn’t go into any more details, so that’s all we’ve got to go off.
There’s no mention of what exactly is behind the problem, how many people have been affected by it, or what the software patch is going to do to improve the situation – but at least something is now being done about it.
You don’t have to look far to find complaints about the battery drain problem: have a look atRedditor the officialApple Support Forumfor example. The issue seems to be affecting multiple models, including theApple Watch Ultra 2, running watchOS 10.1.
Software bugs
Of course, watchOS 10.1 was supposed to fix bugs rather than introducing new ones. It also enabled thenew Double Tap featurethat you can make use of on this year’sApple Watchmodels, the Apple Watch 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2.
Bugs are pretty par for the course with updates like this, and it’s rare that an update rolls out that doesn’t have any issues at all, but it’s still disappointing that the user experience has been so significantly degraded for what seems to be a substantial number of people.
Quite how many people are seeing this is hard to judge, but going off the posts we’ve linked to above, these don’t seem to be isolated cases. OurApple Watch 9 reviewwas written using watchOS 10, so doesn’t have any references to the battery issue.
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It’s not just watch updates that are causing Apple problems, either. We’re still waiting for a fix for the bug that is making some iPhonesmysteriously turn off overnight, which may have been introduced with the roll out of iOS 17.0.3.
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Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you’ll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.
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