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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 Raz3r over 5 years ago in reply to kvasimodoo

Yes I do. I took the Update-File (12.00) from the 13.00 Beta and put it in the Garmin-Folder. I put the BLE-Driver 5.04 into the REMOTESW-Folder. After unplugging the cable the watch installs SW 12.00 but the BLE stays on 6.06.

Maybe I do sth wrong.

+1 kvasimodoo over 5 years ago in reply to Raz3r

I just don't understand that Garmin will release this to the public at all when there is such a big mistake! After all, they must have a team of developers who will try everything, including users in the Beta version! And if everything is fine, only then will I release the software to the public!

0 5135968 over 5 years ago in reply to Raz3r

Very strange - there are two links to ANT/BT/BLE 5.04 in the thread, from me and also Andy. Andy also wrote how he downgraded from 6.06 to 5.04 and then downgraded from 13.00 to 12.00. I personally never went onto to 13.00 and just downgraded my ANT/BT/BLE.

I can't think why it is not working for you, as there are many who have been able to downgrade just fine and report success, this is with both ANT/BT/BLE 6.03 and 6.06

I wonder if somehow Garmin Express is interfering somehow your side perhaps with an automatic update that is over-writing your ANT/BT/BLE 5.04?

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to 5135968

Same issue for me. I have to restart the watch to stop this power drain.

This is why I'm not sure this is coming from watchface, in this case power drain would be all the time, not just after an activity. It is for me like GPS or Bluetooth still active after activity.

Does anybody know if Garmin works on that?

0 kvasimodoo over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

If you have a 6.03 or 6.06 driver in your watch, it's definitely an ANT driver and not a dial if the dial hasn't done it to you before! No one currently knows if Garmin is doing anything about it, as they have not yet issued an official report. But let's hope so! In any case, send your problem to Garmin's support. The more 6.06 fix requests the better!

+1 5135968 over 5 years ago in reply to kvasimodoo

I really hope Garmin are working on it, as I sent them an extensive spreadsheet with power drain logging with ANT 6.06 and then after downgrade to ANT 5.04 - the spreadsheet contained power readings almost every hour over several charge cycles.

With all these reports, they can't say they haven't been told!

0 Raz3r over 5 years ago in reply to kvasimodoo

You're totally right

0 Raz3r over 5 years ago in reply to 5135968

I am as confused as you. Like I wrote, I tried it a few times. It is really annoying. Maybe I give it another try tomorrow.

0 Andy over 5 years ago in reply to Raz3r

Did you try using the ANT/BLE/BT driver from this link?

ftp-stud.hs-esslingen.de/.../fenix5XPlus_1174Beta.zip

I had to use the driver from that link; if I used the driver from the Garmin webpage, it would not update. The file would disappear from the watch as soon as I unplugged it. With the link above, as soon as I put it in the RemoteSW folder and unplugged the watch, it updated it to 5.04.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to Raz3r

mine is a 5+ Raz3r ... same ANT / BLE / BT driver I think .

Good luck.