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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 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to Andy

Andy, you are a champ .. it worked flawlessly.

Thank you very much for your help Andy.

Cheers.

0 Andy over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

No problem, glad to hear it worked out. Battery drain should be normal from now on :)

0 kvasimodoo over 5 years ago in reply to Andy

Exactly, it is always necessary to download the v5.04 driver which was released by Garmin only as a v6.03 driver fix! Only this one allows downgrade to v5.04! Driver v5.04 which was released before v6.03 does not allow to downgrade and always disappears after disconnecting Pc from the watch!

0 kvasimodoo over 5 years ago in reply to 5135968

Please also write if this driver is v5.04 for F5x plus or F5 plus

0 5135968 over 5 years ago in reply to kvasimodoo

I have a F5 Plus

0 tien80 over 5 years ago

Hey guys. A stop gap I have found that works is to power off and power on the device after saving an activity. Not ideal, but works for me until Garmin sorts this out.

0 Narziss over 5 years ago in reply to tien80

Exactly: you switch if off to wash the sweat off under running water and soap, then you put it on charge while you take a shower...

0 5135968 over 5 years ago in reply to tien80

The drain returns as soon as you do another activity (with music / HR belt at least).

Make sure you report the problem to Garmin with power drain details - it will never be fixed if everyone just powers off and works around it. For now downgrading to ANT/BLE/BT 5.04 solves the problem completely with no need for power down after activity.

But the drain after activity problem is a fairly obvious software defect that has crept in recently. Garmin actually offered to replace my watch which is crazy when a software downgrade solves it....

0 tien80 over 5 years ago in reply to 5135968

Agreed. Submitted my support request over a week ago. Got the standard response and so I provided links to this forum thread. Hope Garmin resolves ASAP.

+1 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to Andy

Definitely ... SW 12.00, ANT / BLE / BT driver ver 5.04 works well, for those is still having batt drain fast issue, you should all downgrade as I did.

After having SW ver 12.00 and ANT / BLE / BT driver ver 5.04 loaded at 1:00pm, at 6:00am the next morning, batt sat at 94% (~0.35%/hr), i then went for a 12km run, came back at 7:30am and batt was 77%, it used roughly 10%/hour with GPS and Music streaming, which is a normal, then after stopped all apps, since 7:30am (it is now 12:30pm) the watch batt remains at 77% unmoved !!!

Thanks to all of your inputs to this issue, especially kvasimodoo, who started this thread, it has been a pleasure reading all your comments and tricks.

Cheers.