Fenix 5+ power drain

Hello,

I've got a battery drain issue with my fenix 5+. They were not in use for the last 2 months. After powering up, updating (to SW 11.00) and charging the battery life became completely disastrous. In smartwatch mode it consumed aroud 0.4..0.5% per hour. But after first outdoor activity with GPS it started to burn the power like demon. Average consumption ranged from 1.5% to 2% per hour and never less. I tried rebooting and soft reset; this helped until the first GPS activity. After that the power drain returned to the extra level. All external sensors (including wrist HR) were turned off. Moreover, I've tried the beta SW (11.73) - nothing new: after resetting everything looks fine till the first GPS connect.

I love my watches, but the power drain is far off the specification and dissapointes me. I see that without any sport activity battery works well and could hold the charge up to 8..9 days. But it doesn't fit me.
Do you have any idea how to troubleshoot this?

PS: I tried to fully discharge and recharge the battery to recalibrate the circuits.

Thank you in advance.

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0 kvasimodoo over 3 years ago in reply to Eric M

connect Fenix to the computer via USB to be able to see it as a device (filesystem)

Download the .zip file

extract the zip file and then copy from System_Backdate the GUPDATE.GCD file to the /Garmin directory on the Fenix

Watch will do a firmware downgrade and a hard reset and reboot automatically as you disconnect from the computer

0 Eric M over 3 years ago in reply to kvasimodoo

My bad. Which .zip file should I be downloading and where can I download it from?

Is there a link for all the older version of firmware for Fenix 5 Plus? Also, mine is an APAC version device.

I read on above mentioned about downgrading the ANT /BLE /BT driver to 5.04. Does it worth a shot to downgrade just the driver and stay with firmware v.11 as the higher battery consumption issue could be due to the driver and not the firmware?

Thanks in advance.

0 kvasimodoo over 3 years ago in reply to Eric M

Exactly, the problem is not in the SW, but in the ANT / BLE / BT 6.03 driver! So leave the SW as you have it, and just downgrade the driver from 6.03 to 5.04.

0 - over 3 years ago in reply to kvasimodoo

It returned again. I have been facing for the drain for a couple of days. Since I am on 11.00 with ANT/BLE/BT 5.04 driver I have no clue what to do. I would avoid another hard reset. Maybe I give a try to SW12.00, and perhaps downloading a new sw/fw cleans some of the "dirts" from my watch.

Anyway my report is that the drain comes after activities, but in a strange way not all of the activities triggers the abnormally high post-activity discharge.

0 - over 3 years ago in reply to kvasimodoo

Kvasimodoo,

originally you posted that ˝same with mi Fenix 5X plus ! About 0.3%-0.5% battery per hour , but after the activity with GPS, the consumption started to be about 1.3%-1.6% battery per hour. Same for both sw 11 and sw 11.73beta."

So also before you upgraded to 11.73.

Since sw 11 equals to having ANT/BLE/BT driver of 5.04 I dont really understand how you deducted that the driver caused the problem.

And I never upgraded from 11.00 to any beta of higher numbering, that means I have been on 5.04 for months. But I also faced high drain in multiple waves.

Any conclusion from your side?

0 Eric M over 3 years ago in reply to -

So does it mean even downgrade to old version driver also not really fixing the problem?

0 kvasimodoo over 3 years ago in reply to -

When updating to SW11.73, I updated the ATN 5.04 driver to 6.03, and then I started having battery consumption problems! I thought it was a SW problem, so I did a downgrade to sw 11, but the problem persisted, so I did a downgrade to sw 9.10 and it still didn't help! So I realized that there is no problem in the SW but probably in the ATN 6.03 driver! I wanted to downgrade to 5.04, but it was not possible because the driver does not have this option! So I wrote to Garmin support that I think there is a problem with the power consumption of this driver! Then I reloaded SW 11 (the last official one) and waited for the ATN driver update. Fortunately, after about 2 days, Garmin supported the opportunity to downgrade the ATN driver to the original 5.04. I was glad that the support reacted so quickly. And since then I have not had the slightest problem with energy consumption . I hope I explained well how I came to this, that there is a problem in the driver and not in the SW.

0 kvasimodoo over 3 years ago in reply to Eric M

Download the latest Beta SW 11.75 zip for your watch, and there you will find driver 5.04 which can be loaded via driver 6.03 (this option was made by Garmin support)! Then connect the watch to the PC and find the folder in the Garmin folder (now I'm not sure about the exact name Removable SW) it is definitely on that folder at the end of the SW. You copy the driver into it and disconnect the watch from the PC. And then only the display confirms the update! And you're done. Now I'm with the dog in the woods, so when I get home, I'll specify the name of the folder

0 kvasimodoo over 3 years ago in reply to kvasimodoo

So I almost hit It's a RemoteSW folder. Copy the driver to it and after disconnecting from the PC confirm the update

0 - over 3 years ago in reply to Eric M

Although it fixed the problem for Kvasimodoo, for me it is not the issue

. Moreover I started to test SW12.00, which came with 5.04, so BT ver. 6.03 was abandoned by Garmin, but I face the same problem as if there were a running process gobbling as much energy from the battery as it can.