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Samsung has done some great things with the Galaxy Watch lineup. We absolutely loved the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic, and the company has even added in some much-needed features that the Apple Watch has had for years. However, Galaxy Watch owners are the latest victims of the ongoing fights over battery drain issues. We’ve already seen similar problems crop up with the Google Pixel, seeing a drop in battery life since the March update, and it seems like Galaxy Watch owners are going through something similar. The problem has appeared in reports on the r/GalaxyWatch subreddit, with one user post even pointing towards a potential culprit when they shared a screenshot showing that Google Play Services had used 16% of their battery since the last charge one day and 23 hours ago.
So far, we haven’t seen any official response from Samsung about the issue, which may be disappointing for some since users have been experiencing issues for weeks now. As for how to fix the problem, there doesn’t appear to be any definitive solution just yet. However, some users have reported being able to restart the watch and reduce usage from 10% or more to under 6%, though your mileage may vary. While some have connected the problem to a recent update to the Galaxy Watch lineup, other users with the issue haven’t updated, so there’s no clear reason why it might be happening. It’s also worth noting that not all users are seeing this issue, which only adds to the confusion.
This is a big problem for some Galaxy Watch users
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The lack of any confirmation or acknowledgment from Samsung is especially frustrating, considering how much this issue appears to be affecting the community. One user even reported that Google Play Services had used up to 89% of their battery since the last charge, which is a ridiculous amount of battery usage for a background service, especially since Google claims it doesn’t make your battery drain faster.
And, it appears to be affecting multiple types of Galaxy Watch devices, including the Watch Classic, regular Galaxy Watch, and the Galaxy Watch Ultra — which reports note has only been getting up to two days of battery life despite previously getting three or four (right around Samsung’s projected battery life for the latest Ultra watch that it has to offer). The reason that this is such a big problem, though, is that you can’t disable Google Play Services or uninstall it, or else many Google-powered features will stop working. Your only real recourse here is to restart your watch or clear the cache of the Google Play Services app, though neither of these is guaranteed to solve the problem.
For now, users are waiting on Samsung or Google to figure out what the issue is. In the meantime, if you’re experiencing something similar, you may want to try restarting or even resetting your watch to clear out any potential issues.

