Fool us three times? Galaxy Watch owners are reporting abnormal battery drain yet again

Samsung has just launched the Galaxy Watch 9 and Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, but it’s been a topsy-turvy year if you own an older Galaxy Watch. These users reported battery drain issues in 2026, and it sounds like the problem has struck again.

Multiple Reddit users have reported major battery drain problems on their Samsung smartwatches. The problem seems to affect a variety of devices, including the Galaxy Watch 8, Galaxy Watch 7, and Galaxy Watch 6 generations.

Redditor chunkyfen outlined his issue with the Galaxy Watch 8 40mm:

At 3pm today, I turned it off because I wanted to save some battery on my hour long walk back home with active gps. It’s at 40% battery.

At 3:50 I turn it back on and the battery dropped to 10% after reboot. I turned it off and on again thinking it’s some kind of bug, now it’s at 5%, I turn it off completely.

30% lost in a matter of minutes with a reboot! Crazy haha

Meanwhile, user KRIEGLERR reported that they left home with their Galaxy Watch 7 at 75%, only for it to drop to 1% and turn itself off after four hours. The user then charged their watch to 75% after work and wore it to bed, but found that it was dead in the morning.

So what could be causing the problem? Well, the common denominator seems to be that most of these users recently updated their smartwatches. One Galaxy Watch owner specifically noted that they had just installed the July 2026 security patch. This suggests that we’re looking at a software glitch rather than a hardware defect.

What can Galaxy Watch owners do to address this battery drain issue, then? At least one user suggested that clearing the watch’s cache helps, although others have reported that this didn’t work at all. Another potential solution is to factory reset your wearable.

This wouldn’t be the first or even second time that we’ve heard about battery drain on Galaxy Watch models this year, though. Back in April, users reported massively reduced battery life on their smartwatches due to Google Play Services. The situation repeated itself last month, as some Galaxy Watch owners found that Google Play Services was eating through their batteries once again. Needless to say, I wouldn’t be surprised if Google has a hand in this latest round of endurance woes.

We’ve asked Samsung for comment regarding this issue and a timeline for a fix. We’ll update our article as soon as the company has an answer for us. Here’s hoping that the problem is addressed sooner rather than later.