Disappointing battery life

I have the same issue. Battery has gone from 100% to 60% in two and a half days. I did one 90 minute run in that time with GPS. It seems to use about 15% of battery per day without activity and is on course to last less than five or six days per change.

I wonder if rather than GPS possibly staying on after an activity, it's actually that the f5 is trying to hold on to the connection with ANT/BT devices that were connected during the activity (or re-establish them). I came back from a ride about 20 mins ago, my bike is probably about 6m away in the garage which is detached from the house. With my old f5, as soon as I got off the bike it practically lost connection with the various sensors, but with the much improved connectivity of my f5+ it still seems to be able to just about hold the connection to my Vector 3s and my Di2 even over that distance and through 2 walls (which I guess also stops them going to sleep so will be sucking their batteries too).

I'm no expert, but I understand that many 2-way communication protocols adjust their power based on signal strength, so as the signal gets weaker (e.g. devices get further apart), the signal is boosted to compensate, thus using more energy. This could account for the fact that some people's post-activity battery drain is actually worse than what they see during an activity.

So maybe this is a side effect of the improved BT/ANT range of the f5+? It's all just a theory of course.

Interesting theory but unless it is trying to find devices it hasn't connected to during the activity it doesn't quite work for me.

I have may F5+ set up to connect to Tempe, HR Basic, HR Premium and 2 GSC-10s. However when I am at work and go for my lunchtime walk none of these devices are accessible as they are either at home or in my locker several hundred metres away.

I am however seeing the post activity drain.

Deliberately ran battery down to the point where f5 shut down yesterday, then recharged it to 100% and left it charging a further 2 hours after that. <24hrs later with 60 minutes GPS activity (+Di2, Vector 3, Tempe, HRM Run), and battery is down to 75%.

The external sensors should disconnect when the workout is saved and should no longer be a factor regarding power usage, I think it's related to GPS workouts, as I was not able to observe elevated drain after strength training with my chest strap.

Agreed, there seems to be no issue with Strength workouts - though I don't use chest strap for Strength training, mine regularly connects to Tempe sensor lying in my apartment during my Strength session and this seem to have no effect.

It seems to be GPS related. I see two versions here:

• optimistic - this is something fixable in firmware, something left running after the workout that shouldn't, and we'll see new firmware soon
  
• pessimistic - this is hardware issue. Possibly battery mis-reporting charge under the load, which gets slowly corrected after the load is over. But that would also show under other heavy sources of stress like music player and would mean the watch would not last full charge on GPS, which could be tested.
  

I will be optimist for now, at least until my return window is over. ;-)

Scenario 2 would mean the watch does not get the advertised battery life and comes up significantly short of specs. This should be simple to test by running one long activity with 100% charge until the watch drains completely and turns off (noting the total run-time while trying to keep interaction to a minimum, and the GPS environment as ideal as possible).

It's probably a software issue that can be resolved.

I'd also opt for the software issue.

That's what I did after my 1h30 trail-run yesterday: I waited for the activity to be synced and then I turned off the watch and turned it on again.
=> Until now the problem seems to be gone. But that's no prove because it did not happen everytime for me beforehand anyway. I'll keep rebooting it until a new firmware version is out or the problem occurs after reboot again.

The external sensors should disconnect when the workout is saved and should no longer be a factor regarding power usage...

I don't think that's always the case. If I keep wearing my HRM-Run after an activity, my f5+ continues to get my HR from it - I can tell this because if I take it off whilst using the HR widget, it will lose my HR and go to 'Measuring' while it switches to OHR - though my f5 did the same and I'd guess this is intended behaviour for HRMs so might be specific to them.

Agreed, there seems to be no issue with Strength workouts - though I don't use chest strap for Strength training, mine regularly connects to Tempe sensor lying in my apartment during my Strength session and this seem to have no effect.

Not agreed - I also see the massive battery drain after internal strength training sessions with Garmin HRM Tri Chest strap.

I included some screenshots of the battery meters I used.

On the picture with the 13% battery zoomed in (1 day) you see that after the activity was finished a higher drain was there but then smooths out and only drops for 1 per cent in around 12 hours (which is already much better than on the other activities)

On other pictures with the 13% on 4 days you see the drop from 94% due to the activity and then a massive drain afterwards...


BR
Chris

Hello everyone,
just reporting battery life from my 5S plus with sapphire edition. I don't see any huge drain at any particular time, I mean more important than what I would expect - but the battery life is significantly worse than my previous Fenix 5S, on which the daily drain (in watch mode) was roughly 8% for 24 hours. Measurement on the 5S plus is more about 12% (so 50% more). This is with stock watch face, no HR display.
Regarding activity I get approx. the same difference. Activity (w GPS) was approx 10% per hour on the 5S, now I get 12 to 15% per hour on the 5S plus (without music).
I hope the battery life will be improved with future updates, but in my experience the battery life is not "terrible". Just a bit below what I expected, given the amazing battery life of Fenix 5 series.