Where did you buy the phone from? There’s a chance it had an unofficial battery installed or was refurbished.

That old model just wasn’t sustainable. Developers needed to constantly sell copies to new customers just to keep the lights on. It worked for small-time, one-off apps like a pdf reader but for games, particularly with multiplayer or online features they have to pay employees salaries and server costs too.

At some point the customer base was maxed out and sales slowed.

I went back in my app list to the beginning when the App Store launched and so many of the companies that made those early apps are just gone now. Blaming Apple as being greedy is reductive and overly simplistic.

It’s a mature market, this is what happens. Do you get mad at the lack of innovation year-over-year with washing machines?

I was really tempted to upgrade ’down’ to the regular Pro from the 14PM but there’s something nice about pretty much never needing to worry about battery, no matter how I use it throughout the day.

There’s likely something else happening there because my same upgrade path has shown very strong battery on the 15PM. I feel comfortable only charging to 80% each day and end the day with 40-50% battery remaining.

Degradation is not linear. Stop worrying until it drops below 85%.

I’m swapping watch faces even more. I have them tied to different Focus modes which activate automatically.

“Your iPhone will only charge to about 80%.” is the text that explains this feature when you turn it on.

Yea OP never mentioned the battery health. If it’s mid-80’s or higher it’s possible the battery drain issues could be caused by software. Would likely be worth it to fully unpair and re-pair the watch.

Let the battery bottom out as much as possible. Keep the battery low and don’t charge until it’s completely dead. Let it spend a lot of time in the dead state.

This obvs sucks if you want to use your watch but 🤷🏻‍♂️

How much time is left in your AppleCare+ plan? If it expires soon just enroll in monthly AC+ within 30 days of expiration.