I just went to the Apple Support site, and it appears a battery replacement is unavailable for my watch. It is only available if you have Applecare+. Did you find a link for battery replacement somewhere else?
Randy
My watch v5 was covered under the options here:
https://support.apple.com/watch/repair
When I entered Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS) an estimate of $79 popped up (so cheaper than my v5’s $99!)
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Thanks, Jack. I clicked the link above that one, which went to more repair options. My estimated cost was $99. I’ll have to rethink my upgrade plans now.
Seriously: I would not spend even $79 on a Series 3 at this point. It’s long out of watchOS updates. I’d really just think about a SE and see if you can get a trade-in price for the Series 3.
I’d not even battery update a Series 5. I kept my old Series 5 as a backup watch - I have so much fitness and health history collected by Apple Watches over 7+ years now that even one day without one would be a disappointment for me, so I always keep my old watch as a backup. But Apple just announced that Series 5 will not get watchOS 11, and my S5 had only 83% max capacity, so I just traded it in for a new 40mm SE (the SE2 of course), and will now just keep the SE as a backup when I upgrade again (probably next year, maybe the year after.) I figure that once watchOS upgrades are not supported on an older model that the trade-in value will plummet, so I figured that I was maximizing my trade-in, plus getting a watch that’s a little faster (the S8 SIP is about 20% faster the the S5) with a 100% battery. I wore it yesterday for the first time, while my Ultra was charging. The Series 5 is a different case compared with the Series 3, as it has the always on display, so upgrading to an SE is actually a slight downgrade, if you like AOD like I do. So Series 9 would be the better upgrade, but that’s a lot more expensive.
But even for normal people who only own one of these watches - to me the cutoff for whether to do a battery service would be if watchOS is still getting updates. I know that maximize the life of technology is a positive for the environment, but Apple does recycle and refurbish these, so it’s not just 100% eWaste.
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Agree with most of what you said, but what would be in it for Apple to do this? It seems like a large expense, especially for the OLED screen.
But a larger point would be that Apple’s repair/replace/refurb procedures invite a lot of guessing about what they actually do. 
I assume that those refurbished watches are distributed to stores to give to the next person who needs a battery replacement.
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