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

(Image credit: Apple)

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.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.