New Garmin Owner - leaving Bluetooth on question

Former Member over 7 years ago

Normally I have bluetooth turned off on my phone and my watch. Each morning I turn both on and upload my sleep and do the same at night to upload my daily data.

This evening when I went to connect for the first time in two days I noticed my Fenix 5x said "waiting for phone" meaning I must not have turned the watch bluetooth off after my last update.

I don't see any impacts to battery life, I am just curious can leaving bluetooth on on my watch when it's off on my phone damage any components or hurt the watch in any way?

Would it constantly be searching for a device to connect to? I really didn't see any change in battery or drain at all over the 48 hours it was left on the watch.

Thanks in advance for your insight.

NOTE- I also posted this in the 5x forum, figured the tech was the same in both models, with the exception of maps so there may be insight here.

0 AntonisSp over 7 years ago

You should have no issues.
The watch will “listen” for the Bluetooth connection configured, but battery drain should be minimal. I’m sure how exactly BLE handles this connection, but I don’t think the watch will actively scan for the phone. If phone is in range, data will be transmitted.

0 mcalista over 7 years ago

The Bluetooth Low Energy connection between watch and phone is characterised by very brief duty cycles. The chip powers on, and if there is no data to be transmitted, powers down after just a fraction of a second. The power consumption is extremely low compared with that demanded GPS, backlight and the HR LED's. Even with 24/7 HR monitoring, and the phone connection permanently on, the watch will give a battery life of 2 weeks plus.

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

The Bluetooth Low Energy connection between watch and phone is characterised by very brief duty cycles. The chip powers on, and if there is no data to be transmitted, powers down after just a fraction of a second. The power consumption is extremely low compared with that demanded GPS, backlight and the HR LED's. Even with 24/7 HR monitoring, and the phone connection permanently on, the watch will give a battery life of 2 weeks plus.

So, if the phone connection is always turned on on the watch and not connected to anything it is okay? It won't continuously search it do any damage?

0 Mentox over 7 years ago

Damage? No if that was the case Garmin would have changed the behaviour of the watch.

The only "downside" of having it on is that by default it notifies you that it lost connection with your phone if you are out of range. This notification by default turns on the back light and that in turn might consume a bit of battery. The easy solution is to disable the notification for when is loses connection with your phone.

0 dansebr over 7 years ago

Old habits die hard.

Micro managing bluetooth was useful to save battery maybe 5 years ago or more, nowadays you’re gaining nothing by doing so, you are however wasting time and mental energy by keeping this meaningless routine task in the back of your mind and possibly actually wasting battery by switching on the screen of your phone just to keep switiching on and off the bluetooth.

BLE is disigned to be always on, in both your watch and your phone with no meaningful impact on your battery life, if you don’t want notifications on your watch you can switch that off without switching off the bluetooth. Just try it, switch off the notifications on your watch but leave the bluetooth on, see what difference does that make.

Why do extra work for no gain? Why waste our time on micro managing something that was meant to run on its own?

0 mcalista over 7 years ago

Old habits die hard.

Micro managing bluetooth was useful to save battery maybe 5 years ago or more,

More specifically, to Bluetooth versions 3 and earlier that had higher power consumption (but date to roughly that timeframe).

0 GTarg over 7 years ago

The easy solution is to disable the notification for when is loses connection with your phone.

How do i do this?

0 mcalista over 7 years ago

Settings> Phone> Alerts