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Battery issue, known bug

Hi!
Since i bought my Fenix 5, one month ago, updated to v 12 on the first day of use, battery life has been awful.
Without recording any activity, the watch battery drains 25-30% every day.
I always kept 20% display light for 4 secs and only after dark on wrist move.
In the last weeks i tried disabling activity tracking as well as Move IQ and stopped wearing it while sleeping. I just left on phone notifications and HR, but that didn’t make much difference, just a few percentage points per day.

So I called the italian support center, where a not very polite operator told me that Garmin was aware of a bug affecting not all but many F5 units and was responsible for the heavy draining of the battery. He told me that it’s not a hardware related issue so it is pointless to return it, and that i just have to be patient and wait. When i replied that this device is available since more than 1 year and this should be enough patience for a bug so serious, he just told me that there was nothing he could to.

So I took a look at this forum, but except some poeple complaining, didn’t find case so severe as mine.
I’d like to know if this is really a known bug and if Garmin is actually working on that.
Also it would be helpful to know in there is other people on the forum with my same issue.

Thanks

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0 Chris.J.Hart over 5 years ago

Do you have an third party watch faces installed? I've had issues with some in the past.

What is the status of your BT connection? If active is it "Connected" or "Waiting for Phone"? I have suffered serious drain previously when the BT connection with my phone hasn't been stable.

For info, my almost 2 year old F5 drains around 6% per day with activity tracking on. Display light on demand only.

0 pistapoci over 5 years ago

I'm using one of the analog preinstalled watch faces, just personalized with the colors and the fields (date, notifications, battery %).
BT Connection is always "connected" as long as I keep the phone close enough, which happens almost all the time.
Still no clue. I'm following another thread in this page where it looks like other people are suffering from the same problem.

0 AJRykala over 5 years ago

Sounds like a hardware issue and may need to be more forceful with Garmin re warranty return. I'm also getting much better battery life even with 2 hour activiities

0 pistapoci over 5 years ago

You may be right, but there are so many people who got their unit replaced by a refurbished one which had the exact same issue. I think I'll wait a little more before I take a decision

0 lacroix_mathieu over 5 years ago

Fascinating how many Garmin Forums talk about that battery issue on the most expensive Garmin Watch.
The most fascinating is how they do not REACT! woow : Sooo customer oriented!
Will return mine as my battery dies in less than 3 days... without doing any activitivities and bluetooth off ... and just bought last week...

0 Maarten_S over 5 years ago

Software version 13.00 is now available. This software version has been rolled out to 50% of users.

Change Log:
Fixed an issue where the device could log an extra lap during Swim activities.
Fixed a couple of issues with Jumpmaster.
Fixed an issue where one couldn't Race an activity from the activity history menu.
Fixed an issue where some devices were reporting a higher than expected battery drain.
Fixed an intermittent issue where the device could crash during an activity.
Fixed an issue where the GPS updates were failing to install.
Fixed an issue where the data screen background color would remain inverted, if ending a swim workout early.
Added support for Approach CT10 on Fenix 5, 5S, 5X and FR935. (Menu > Settings > Sensors & Accessories > Club Sensors.)

You may want to try the 13.00 update (rolling out to users now) before returning. Might fix it for you, based on the release notes.

0 briviopc over 5 years ago

Hello
I installed version 13 of the firmware, but little has changed.
I have not yet tried to do a hard reset that a little bit had affected the situation when I installed version 12 of the firmware. (I had the same problem as you).

in italian:
ciao
ho installato la versione 13 del firmaware, ma è cambiato poco.
non ho ancora provato a fare un hard reset che un pò aveva migliarato al situazione quando ho installato la versione 12 del firmware. (avevo il tuo stesso problema)

0 Bisco86 over 5 years ago

Same problem over here, battery drains like crazy, no activity recorded... 2 days of battery life... that is incredibly bad! I used to get 2 WEEKS of battery life out of this watch!
Garmin please fix this!
I’m on Version 13.00… its even worse than 12.50!ciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1473406.jpg

0 Cedricg_38 over 5 years ago

My > 2years old Fenix 5 still have ~10 days of autonomy with several runs and swims by week...
FW 12.0. It seems that not all devices are affected.

0 briviopc over 5 years ago

Hi everyone
since I installed the firmware version 13 the battery drastically drops ... without activity after 3 days it is unloaded..with 12.50 at least I did 1 week / 10 day with some activities.
as soon as I have time I try hard reset to see if it improves.
gamin fix battery life !!!