Disappointing battery life

Hi All,




I have exactly the same problem!




I have a Fenix plus 5 which on average drains about 10-20% per day as a smart watch.




I charged it 100% a day prior to an enduro race hoping that I could track all the activity. At the start of the race, I had 73%. I didn’t do much to it apart from fiddling around with the setting for the MTB activity tracking prior to the race.




For the race I turns on pro climb and gps with Galileo. It ran out of battery after 5 hours so I couldn’t record the whole. I was out there about 8 hours. It involved a lot of start and stops dunno if that uses up battery sooner. It might have been able to stretch for whole 8 hours should I have had 100% in it?




That means I will need to charge it to 100% switch it off and turn it on just before the race to get the most out of it.




I can just imagine how this watch won’t work for a day long hike with navigation. Hikes of 8hours plus....




Is there any tips I can improve the battery life as smart watch? Garmin claims it will last 7 day as smart watch. I always have h heart rate monitor on.




I have already drained the battery completely twice.




I am seriously considering returning it.I do like the size of 5s but the battery life is just unacceptable short.




Thanks

Hello Ttwchan,

I own the 5S Plus for basically the weekend now.

Just a heads up.
If You have the 5S+, please do not write 5+, those are different devices with different characteristics.

If You expect it to work as a smart watch, You should use it as a smart watch. During an activity the drainage is more and there are other values available from Garmin for this.

These things make it easier to read your message correctly.

For me, I do not know yet if I dislike the battery usage, as I am quite sure I am using things which affect the expected battery live.

Best regards,
Ruud

Having tested this in an unscientific way over the last three weeks I agree the battery life isn't great, but its not that much shorter than Garmin are anticipating.

I'm not saying its just the GPS, but I am convinced that the GPS is killing the battery, both during and after having GPS running. But in fairness, its achieving what they say.

I say unscientific because the first week I had the watch in its rawest of formats and just used it as a watch/HR monitor.
On average I used about 8% a day. It actually ran out of juice after 11.5 days. On par with Garmins 12 Days as a smart watch, but without the smart.

The second week I connected it to my phone (Bluetooth, Wifi, Notifications) - it lasted almost 9 Days.3 Days off the Garmin quoted 12 days as a smart watch. Not so impressive.

Last week I used it three times with GPS and on each occasion the battery would drain exceptionally quickly.
One example, went out at 7:20pm (battery at 24%) for a bike ride, put on the activity with GPS, and 30 minutes later the battery was at 20%. By 10:30pm that night it had dropped to 16%.
That's 8% in 4 hours. At that rate I would get no more than 2 Days usage. Again, its on par, if not better than the 18 hours quoted.
By the morning it had dropped to 14% and then down to 12% by the end of the day.

On another occasion I had a similar drop of 4% during a 30 minute ride, but once I'd synced to the phone, I turned the phone off, left it for 5 minutes then turned it back on again. I noticed that the drop in % was back to normal after this, which suggests that GPS continues running in the background after you have finished an activity.

I don't know what they have done to lose 6 hours on the GPS mode compared to the older Fenix 5 but people buy this type of watch because it has GPS and does what it does. Just a shame they've ruined it by losing 25% off its life expectancy per charge.

So I am resigning myself that using as a smartwatch I will get slightly less usage, and doing anything with GPS will mean recharging in 24 hours.

Hello LittleSteve,

I read some of your information here, thanks from my side for this kind of investigation.
The main message I'd like to read out of it is
-You get a fair amount of battery time in smart watch mode, if You keep to certain rules
-if You do an activity, beware that You will need to recharge in time

On the negative side, for me, I do not know what these 'certain rules' are yet. I just received the watch and I am still learning.

I charged the watch this morning to 100% while in the shower.
I had a bike ride of 30 minutes, but forgot to stop it correctly :(. As I found out, the activity was more than an hour already.
I saw 82% after that, do not recall exactly when. I am now already at 78% and the watch had no activity at all, except for 'showing the time'. I use the crystal watch face atm, do not know if that can be a reason.
For my understanding 4% sounds like a big chunk for only 8 hours of smart watch usage.

But for the moment I am not complaining. I really need to learn before I am capable of judging whether I have the right to be dissatisfied.

Best regards,
Ruud

Hi Ruud,
Hard to determine as you haven't given percentages at certain times, but if you stopped your watch after an hour I would have expected it to read about 90/92%. Then if some hours later you noticed it was down to 82% then it would suggest (as I think) that GPS continues to run in the background after you think you've turned it off.
Try turning the watch off fo r 5 minutes and back on - it seemed to "slow down time" for me....

Is Wi-Fi the culprit for post-activity drain?

I mentioned this in a separate thread a couple of weeks back, but didn't get any responses so thought I'd just throw it out there one more time...

Even though I've got Wi-Fi auto-upload enabled, I've not seen any indication at all that this is actually working - I certainly don't get the near-instantaneous notification from Strava (linked to my GC account) within seconds of walking through my front door like I used to with my f3. It tends to be several minutes before my activities sync with GC (without any intervention by me) which is no different than it was with my non-Wi-Fi f5 syncing over Bluetooth. In fact, there seems to be no way of telling whether an activity has synced via Wi-Fi or BT, and the time it takes makes me wonder if auto Wi-Fi sync isn't even working - I certainly don't see the MAC of the f5+ in my DHCP logs which is odd as it seems to manually connect OK if I tell it to.

Wi-Fi's a big battery drainer, and the only time the f5+ should activate Wi-Fi is when it syncs an activity straight after completion (not regularly at other times, like it does with BT), or when you manually sync it. If it is having problems connecting to the network when it syncs, maybe it leaves the Wi-Fi connection open for several minutes while it repeatedly tries to sync which could account for the post-activity battery drain. Last week I disabled Wi-Fi sync and didn't seem to suffer the same post-activity drain that I had before, but I only managed to get two rides in, so that may have just been coincidence as I don't always seem to get the drain anyway.

So a few questions, especially for those suffering post-activity drain:

Do you have Wi-Fi auto-sync turned on?
Do you think it's working (rather than just syncing activities over BT)?
Do you see an improvement if you turn it off (there will be a slight battery life improvement anyway if you're not using Wi-Fi, but does the post-activity drain go away)?

As an aside, Garmin contacted me last week to exchange my f5 which I'll sort out with them, thought I'm still not convinced this is a hardware issue.

Neil

I agree that it does not seem possible to determine if the Wi-Fi is actually working. One of the staff at Garmin told me the watch tries to sync with BT first, which does not make sense. My 5S+ seems to only sync on BT. I turned off the Wi-Fi for the same reason you did, and I am noticing a little bit better battery life, but I don't know if that was responsible.

So a few questions, especially for those suffering post-activity drain:

Do you have Wi-Fi auto-sync turned on?
Do you think it's working (rather than just syncing activities over BT)?
Do you see an improvement if you turn it off (there will be a slight battery life improvement anyway if you're not using Wi-Fi, but does the post-activity drain go away)?

As an aside, Garmin contacted me last week to exchange my f5 which I'll sort out with them, thought I'm still not convinced this is a hardware issue.

Neil

To your questions:

• I have Wi-Fi auto-upload on, though turning it off was the first thing I tried when I noticed post-activity battery drain. I don't think it made significant difference, so it's back to on now.
  
• I think it works. Most of the time, the watch syncs over my phone. But on one on two occasions, I had phone connection off and when I got back from a run it still synced over wifi at my home. But I don't have any extensive research to back this up.
  
• As noted above, I did not see measurable improvement either way.
  

I don't think wifi is a culprit here. The PABD happens regardless of the sync status: it happens before the activity is synced and it continues after it's synced. It will stop on its own in time, and it seems that there's a correlation between how long it takes to stop and how long the activity was, but that's really about all I know of that impacts PABD in any noticeable way.

I want to hear what your experience with new f5 is. If there's significant difference compared to previous one, it means it may be worth exchanging. As you, at this point, I am not convinced.

You know an issue's gone critical when it gets its own acronym :-)

Hey Garmin! #PABD

I've tried most of the toggle on/off suggestions that others have made previously, and none of them have made any noticeable difference. There is one thing that seems to work for me. Someone very early on in this thread said do NOT charge to 100%. So, I followed that path. And guess what? That seems to be the most effective remedy for me. I've been charging the watch to about 85-90% and then taking it off charge. It doesn't eliminate the PABD, but it does seem to help. When I charge the watch to 100%, I have been losing about 20% per day ~ that is with a GPS+Galileo run of 75-90 mins, then the rest of the day in smart watch mode with nothing special going on. Coming from the 935 with a similar amount of training, I would lose maybe 10% in a day. Anyway, I charged the watch to 87% yesterday afternoon. Checked it before bed and it was still at 87%. Checked it again this morning before my one hour run, still at 87%. Just checked it a minute ago, which is now 2 hours after my run and it's still at 87%. This thing really is bonkers. #PABD

Seems like a lot of different experiences here.
I definitely am not able to use the watch a long time without discharge, but I will try that charging up to 85-90% in the near future.

Following on a 5S+:
Yesterday I have switched Menu - Settings - Phone to off after a charge to 100% (20:35) to wake up with 97% (04:45). When leaving the house (06:15) it was still at 97% and a 30 minutes bike ride (GPS+Galileo, no headphone, no external HRM) brought it to 92%. Now (07:40), one hour after my ride, the watch still shows 92%. I do not see any post activity bug here for the moment, but there is no way for the watch to upload the activity, as no WiFi network is installed and phone is switched to off.

Will try the day with phone off and another bike ride home with headphone, so not know if that will work when phone is off, but I will try.
In the evening I will then go to syncing and switching phone on again.