Apple says watchOS 10.1 beta tanked the iPhone's battery life, here's the fix

Have an Apple Watch running the watchOS 10.1 and found that your iPhone battery life just isn’t what it used to be? Don’t worry, you aren’t alone. And Apple already has some good news for you.

The issue seems to have affected people who had the watchOS 10.1 beta installed on their Apple Watches with Apple admitting that some of those people suffered from degraded battery life on the iPhone that it is paired with. However, a fix is at hand.

Apple says that its latest and third beta of watchOS 10 has a fix implemented, meaning those who are running the beta should definitely update soon to make sure that their iPhones runs for as long as possible on a single charge.

Living that beta life

At this point, it’s important to remember that running any beta software can have unforeseen consequences, although it’s fair to say that few would have expected an Apple Watch bug to cause people to suffer from iPhone problems. But that’s exactly what happened.

Apple confirmed the bug in the watchOS 10.1 beta 3 release notes, saying that it fixed an issue where « increased power consumption might occur when an Apple watch running watchOS10.1 is paired with an iPhone with iOS 17.0. »

Notably, Apple also adds that the problem could also occur when using a watchOS 10 Apple Watch with an iPhone running the iOS 17.1 beta, too. If that’s you, we’d suggest downloading and installing the latest iOS 17.1 beta as soon as possible.

Apple hasn’t said what went awry here, but it’s good that it’s fixed.

More people are likely running the watchOS 10.1 betas than usual in order to get a new Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 feature — the Double Tap addition that lets you interact with apps by tapping two fingers together. It isn’t confirmed when watchOS 10.1 will ship to the public, but it’s likely to happen within the next few weeks.