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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 kvasimodoo over 5 years ago in reply to Sam201176

Yes, you got it right.

0 Former Member over 5 years ago in reply to Raz3r

I was having this exact same problem. Successfully downgraded to 12.0 but still kept 6.06. I missed one small crucial step in the walk through. The 5.04 has to go into the RemoteSW folder within the Garmin folder.

0 Raz3r over 5 years ago in reply to Sam201176

Sam201176Former Memberkvasimodoo 5135968

I have no Idea why, but I finally made it. I am on FW 13.00 and BLE 5.04. I did EXACTLY the same as before, maybe my watch wants to proof if i take this serious enough ;-)

Did you downgraded to a lower FW than 13.00 or is the battery fine with the combination 13.00/5.04?

Thank you all.

0 Raz3r over 5 years ago in reply to Former Member

I did this every time I try to downgrade with no success. I don't know what the problem depends but no it worked for me.

0 5135968 over 5 years ago in reply to Raz3r

I was always on 12.00 and never moved to 13.00 so the just ANT/BLE/BT 5.04 downgrade solved my drain problem.

@Andy wrote that he needed to go to 12.00 as well as the ANT/BLE/BT 5.04 downgrade to solve the drain problem and I think a few other folks who have had success with this process also needed to move down to 12.00

Also I have put on a new watchface called InFocal recently - I am still keeping a log of power drain after 5.04 downgrade for feedback to Garman and InFocal does not seem to use any more power than the built in watch faces, just 2% overnight typically. So if you like 3rd party watchfaces, Infocal seems safe.

0 kvasimodoo over 5 years ago in reply to Raz3r

0 5135968 over 5 years ago in reply to kvasimodoo

Wow, it sounds like Garmin have listened to the power drain after activities with music reports - check out the new ANT/BT/BLE beta

ANT/BLE/BT v6.09 Change Log:

Fix battery drain after music playback

I will test it and continue logging power drain

0 Sam201176 over 5 years ago in reply to Raz3r

That's great news!...

Yes I went down to 12.00 from 13.00 to give myself the best chance of battery recovery success.

All the best.

0 Sam201176 over 5 years ago in reply to 5135968

Ha!...that was a quick emergency fix... Well done Garmin.... I'm staying with 12.00 and 5.04 for now....

Hope the new fix works.... Well done everyone! : -)

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

It's definitively borked. After an activity the GCM active counter keeps incrementing, Low Power time is way below what it should be. If I stop BLE on the phone, GCM active time stops incrementing immediately. I'll do that downgrade of the ANT/BLE driver and check again with this Device Usage widget. BTW I did not notice before because I sync via cable and don't use my phone's BLE a lot.