Users complain of various issues on the Apple Watch S3

Sep 28, 2020 15:42 GMT  ·  By

Apple launched watchOS 7 with much fanfare earlier this month, and the devices that are getting the update are the Apple Watch Series 3 and newer.

However, installing this new operating system on the Apple Watch S3 is proving to be quite a risky decision, as several users are now hitting more or less critical issues, such as slow performance, major battery drains, and apps crashing all of a sudden.

Others claim that complications fail to load, while the device sometimes locks automatically without any reason.

“The first day (9/17) of os7 worked great, but the second day (9/18) it shut down and took quite a while to come back on (I'd guess 3-5 minutes). Today it has restarted once. Complications also take a while to reload after restarting, even if I try to tap them to access the app. The battery has never been low after the restarts (typically above 50%) and the watch is about 4 months old. Never had problems like this with OS6,” one user says in a thread on Apple’s forums discovered by AI.

Handwashing detection broken down

While the update seems to be working fine on my Apple Watch Series 3, I also noticed the slow performance, only that it happens occasionally in my case.

Some complications also fail to load on my Series 3, but they typically work correctly after I tap them and launch the main apps.

On the other hand, the handwashing detection isn’t working at all on my Apple Watch Series 3, and resetting the device doesn’t seem to make any difference.

The worst thing is that Apple Watch owners can’t downgrade their devices, so they’re currently stuck with watchOS 7 going forward.

Apple has remained completely tight-lipped on these problems, so we don’t know if a fix is coming or not.