watchOS 26.0.2 Battery Drain Bug — Apple Watch Series 8

After installing the latest watchOS 26.0.2 update, my Apple Watch Series 8 developed a severe battery-drain bug that kills the watch within hours. The change was immediate and dramatic. Today the device lasted roughly three hours before shutting down completely.

I’ve attempted every known fix — restart, unpair and re-pair, disable Background App Refresh, and even set up as new. My Always-On Display has been off for years, so that isn’t a factor. Battery Health shows 83 percent maximum capacity, which should still allow normal use, yet the drain behaves like a hardware failure. My wife’s watch, identical model and version, exhibits the same symptom since updating, which rules out coincidence.

This seems to be a watchOS 26.0.2 software bug, not typical battery aging or user error. Many owners report identical drain patterns across multiple Apple Watch models, suggesting a wider issue. It reads like a performance regression introduced with this build and deserves Apple Engineering’s attention before the next patch arrives.