Persistent Backlight on Fenix 5 Sapphire

Former Member
Former Member
I purchased a Fenix 5 Sapphire yesterday and since initial power-up, the screen has a faint backlight at all times, and the screen appears to flash when viewed at extreme angles. Also of note is that the device will power on with simply a press of the light button vs the instructed "hold" down to power on.

Yesterday I updated the version to 2.40, then today I updated to 2.72 beta.
I have exhausted the options in the backlight settings menu.
I performed several soft resets by holding the light button down for 20 seconds.
I have reset to factory defaults.

The only way to truly make the backlight go away is to shut the unit down. I am beginning to think this is a hardware problem and perhaps not a software problem. Is anyone else experiencing anything like this?

  • Have you tried turning off the 'gesture' feature to see if stops? At least that might give you a temporary fix and point to it being a problem with sensing gestures, which maybe a reset would fix.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 8 years ago
    Have you tried turning off the 'gesture' feature to see if stops? At least that might give you a temporary fix and point to it being a problem with sensing gestures, which maybe a reset would fix.


    I have turned off gestures. It is essentially an always on 2% backlight. When I set backlight to 5%, the screen is brighter when it's turned on, then back to faint illumination when it's off. So the persistent illumination is not as bright as the 5% setting, but definitely not off, and extremely noticeable in a dark environment.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 8 years ago
    An always on 2% backlight would be a perfect solution for unreadable screen/time, when You are indoors. That probably would be enough to see the time.
    Then to see more presicely, You could push the light-button and You could set the percentage of the light intensity what ever You like. That would be a perfect solution for me..
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 8 years ago
    Same here

    Backlight always on. Looks like the display is glowing slightly. V v noticable.

    OP - did you get it fixed?
    I contacted support over it and they told me to reset the watch. I wiped and reinstalled.

    It didnt work. At least on 4.1
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 8 years ago
    How about 4.14 beta?
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 8 years ago
    Same issue with the beta 4.14
    support told me to return it. But tbh each time i returned a previous fenix each new watch had the same issue... and it was software not hardware