One of the most highly-anticipated tech accessories of 2023 has been the new Apple AAPL Watch.
The Series 9 and Ultra 2 were both released in September, immediately flying off shelves and pored over on forums by fitness junkies and Apple fanatics alike.
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And for good reason. Apple has made no secret of its ambitions to enter — and disrupt — the over $800 billion healthcare space. CEO Tim Cook predicts the Apple's health impact will be its "greatest contribution to mankind."
Make no mistake, the Apple watch does offer a lot of great health monitoring options for folks who want to be more proactive about their fitness or are simply curious about their metrics.
The watch offers a bevy of fun metrics to play around with. Millions of us now track our heart rate, step count, calories burned in a workout and some more advanced metrics like sleep quality and VO2 max levels.
Pair that with Apple's ever-yawning competitive moat that is its exclusive ecosystem, which allows OS users to sync all their data and information across devices, and it's a winning formula. It's no wonder that the over $2 trillion tech company sold over 50 million units in 2022 alone.
Apple fixes a key watch issue
As more people take their health into their own hands, Apple stands to win out with clever product that fits seamlessly into many of our daily lives.
But a key problem with the most recent watch operating system — or watchOS — has been preventing some of that delight in recent months.
After updating to watchOS 10.1, many users started noticing their watch batteries getting sapped faster that usual.
"After the latest update 10.1 my series 6 battery is not charging over 50% and it drains the battery in about 15 minutes. Anyone with similar issues after updating?" one redditor asked on the r/watchOS subreddit.
"Let’s hope and pray it fixes the horrible battery life some of us been having…I went from charging every other night to it barely lasting until the first evening…" another wrote.
"After 10.1 update my battery only lasts a few hours. I can literally watch the percentage go down. Rebooted the watch. Shut off background app refresh after advised by a friend. Still drains ridiculously fast. It’s essentially useless now. I’m out of ideas. Anyone else have this problem?" one watch user asked on Apple's official support forum.
And now, it seems Apple has come up with a solution for the pesky issue.
Apple confirmed in an internal memo to Apple Authorized Service Providers that it's aware of the issue and working on an update that should hopefully fix the battery drain issue. The tech company indicated to MacRumors that the update is "coming soon."
It may come sooner than the already-anticipated watchOS 10.2 update, which is due out in December, though Apple did not have an official comment as to when users might be able to expect it.
