New native 1Password on Apple Watch appears to negatively affect battery life
After updating and activating the new native 1Password Apple Watch app I noticed my watch batter life only last a day, previously it was lasting about 2 days. I have since turned off background app refresh for 1Password and my watch battery appears to be draining at the previous rate. Is this just me or an issue with the new app?
I'm currently on iOS 10.2 on a 16Gb iPhone 5 and I have a Series 1 Apple Watch running watchOS 3.1
1Password Version: 6.5.1
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: iOS 10.2 watchOS 3.1
Sync Type: iCloud
Referrer: forum-search:apple watch battery
Comments
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@UKCodeMonkey: This isn't a problem with the app, but simply a byproduct of the fact that it is now running on your watch. Older apps used WatchKit and ran on the iPhone, so that essentially the watch was only displaying the information and not processing anything. Until I saw that you were using a newer Apple Watch, I nearly had a heart attack when you said "it was lasting about 2 days"! I'm lucky if I can get one, but I'm using the original model. Can you track the battery more over time and let me know what you find? Are you using 1Password there a lot? watchOS should be removing it from memory completely when not in use, so that it wouldn't have any impact on your battery life. Do you have it in the Dock there? I'm interested to learn more, as I'm surprised not to have noticed any difference myself, now that you brought it up.
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@brenty I previously had the app in my dock so it started faster. Looking at the new version it's still in my dock. I'm going to track the % over time with background app refresh off; I'll then do the same tomorrow with app refresh on and again with refresh on but the app not in my dock, although from what I believe with the watch, the last apps used will remain. I use the app once or twice a day so not a heavy user.
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@UKCodeMonkey: Anecdotally, I've had 1Password in the fancy new Apple Watch Dock since watchOS 3 launched and haven't noticed any difference with the following:
- Old WatchKit 1Password pre-Dock
- Old WatchKit 1Password in Dock
- New watchOS 1Password (beta) in Dock
- New watchOS 1Password in Dock
That said, I wasn't expecting or experiencing anything out of the ordinary, so I wasn't paying extra attention to it.
Also, when you refer to "background app refresh", do you mean in iOS Settings > General? I don't believe this should have any impact on the Apple Watch, but I'm going to double-check that.
I'm sorry to put you through this, but so far I'm not able to reproduce it. I'd really appreciate any information you can give me on your usage. I use it every day, but maybe only two or three times — fairly consistent. Thanks so much for your patience and willingness to work with me on this!
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@brenty , I've now run my watch for 2 days; 1 with background app refresh off and today with it on. Oddly I'm not seeing the same battery drain as before. I've not added/removed any apps to/from my watch so the only thing different that I'm aware of is turning background refresh off then back on again.
I recorded time and % and then worked out minutes since start and %, this let me do an X,Y scatter graph with smooth line and plot both days on the same graph as different series: the gradients match very closely! I offset the 1st set of data by 239 minutes to allign the graphs at the 92% battery remaining mark:
Data for background app refresh off:
239 92%, 254, 91%, 315, 88%, 347 87%, 390 83%, 501 79%, 1516 41%
Forecast battery life ~42hData for background app refresh on:
0 100%, 112, 98%, 239 92%, 274 90%, 323 88%, 1419 43%
Forecast battery life ~40hSomething else must have been the cause of the battery issue. Hopefully in a future release there will be battery usage page similar to the iPhone (minus 7 days of course!)
I check my watch regularly through the day - I have meeting reminders pop up and most alerts are on from Whatsapp etc.
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@UKCodeMonkey: I did something really stupid yesterday and thought that I'd reproduced your issue. But it turns out that when using Maps to get directions on the iPhone, it's using the watch and draining its battery if when you're not paying attention... :unamused:
I'm trying to think of what might have caused the drain in your case. If we were talking about a new iOS device, processing photos locally in the background and such is known to cause this sort of issue. But 1Password doesn't need to do anything like this. Like you, I sort of long for more information about what's going on on my watch. When everything's working as expected it doesn't matter, but troubleshooting stuff like this is a bit opaque since you can't even see which version is installed or if it's using power.
Anyway, thank you so much for reaching out about this, even though we're left with a bit of an unsatisfying non-conclusion here. I'm glad it at least seems to be working normally for you now. Let us know if you notice any other odd behaviour!
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