• Many Galaxy Watch owners are reporting a battery drain issue
• It seems to have stemmed from a recent software update
• Samsung hasn't yet commented but Google Play Services might be the culprit

Samsung makes some of the best smartwatches around, but we're seeing multiple reports from Galaxy Watch owners about rapidly draining battery life — and the issue seems to be tied to a recent software update.

As spotted by Android Authority and others, users have taken to Reddit to complain about a sudden drop in battery life. Given the number of comments and upvotes that thread has received, it seems quite a few people are having problems.

Some of the models mentioned in the thread are the Galaxy Watch 5 and the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic, so this is having an impact on more than one device. In one case, a day's worth of battery life has dropped to just 4-5 hours, which shows the severity of the problem.

One user says battery life has become "significantly worse", while another describes their Galaxy Watch "burning through battery like crazy". One commenter says their watch is now "a total disappointment" and not "what Samsung promised".

Restart or reset

There's been no official comment on this from Samsung as yet — we've asked the company and will update this story if we hear back. But the Reddit detectives have noticed Google Play Services using up an inordinate amount of battery juice, so that would seem to be the villain of this particular piece.

Google Play Services runs in the background on Android phones and watches, and handles tasks like connecting apps to the operating system, authenticating users, and reporting location data. It's often updated separately from the main Android or Wear OS software.

The standard troubleshooting methods like restarting, clearing out the data cache, or fully resetting might help, if you're seeing this issue. These techniques seem to have helped a proportion of the users affected, but not everyone.

It's also worth mentioning that some users have chimed in to say that they aren't seeing the battery life issues described by others — so this isn't affecting every Galaxy Watch. Let's hope Samsung can roll out a fix sooner rather than later.

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Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you'll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.