Backlight refuses to stay on despite correct settings

After the last update, the backlight will no longer stay on despite the settings being exactly the way they were (with a functioning always-on backlight). Seems that the last update broke it. I work in a dark environment and my watch is unreadable without the backlight being on all the time.

Oddly, the backlight will stay on indefinitely while I'm in settings, but it times out after about 20-30 seconds when I go back to the watch face. I can press the backlight button and it will come on for about 5 seconds and then turn off. Before, I could toggle it on or off... staying on or off indefinitely until I pressed the button again. That is how it's supposed to work.

Here are my settings -

Settings... System... Backlight... Watch Mode...

Keys - On
Alerts - Off
Gesture - Off
Timeout - No Timeout

Any suggestions are much appreciated.

0 NoTex over 8 years ago

I spoke to support this morning. They said my unit is defective (apparently broken after the update). They are sending me out a replacement. First time dealing with their support. Very short wait time to be connected and they handled it very courteously and professionally.

Obviously support doesn't know what they are talking about. I contacted the beta dev team because of the described backlight issue and this is what they replied to me:

Hello Norbert,
This is working as expected.
The watch face screen goes into low power mode to save battery life after about 5 seconds when “No Timeout” selected. This is by design.

The Fenix 5 team

0 andythetee over 8 years ago

Obviously support doesn't know what they are talking about. I contacted the beta dev team because of the described backlight issue and this is what they replied to me:

Hello Norbert,
This is working as expected.
The watch face screen goes into low power mode to save battery life after about 5 seconds when “No Timeout” selected. This is by design.

The Fenix 5 team

Well that doesn't make any sense now does it? And I'm in touch with the beta team and they are asking further questions about the fault. It clearly ain't a hardware fault that would require a replacement as the screen stays on during an activity.

Oh and gesture for backlight doesn't work either

0 andythetee over 8 years ago

Scrub that, gesture now works

But it is a rather arbitrary decision that you can't leave the watch backlight on

0 JensenB9 over 8 years ago

I have the problem since 3.3 where, when in an activity, the backlight gesture no longer turns the backlight OFF.

Before raising the watch would turn it on, and lowering it would turn it off. This is still how it works when not in an activity. Not so while in an activity.