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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 marrr over 5 years ago

With such big problems try a hard reset...

0 briviopc over 5 years ago

hi, today I did a hard reset. Now we wait to see the results and if the battery life drops drastically or not

0 Tom.Alf over 5 years ago

Hi, I did a hard reset yesterday, deleting everything on the watch. The battery still drops very fast. About 40% in 24h, without any GPS activity. :(

0 povpau over 5 years ago

Hi. Try to turn Wrist Heart Rate sensor off. I've received my Fenix 5s a couple of weeks ago (it is a refurbished replacement for my previous F5s, which had problems with temperature and altimeter sensors) and it's battery performance is terrible. It goes from 100% to 0% in less that 5 hours - even without any activity, just wearing it casually.

I've tried hard resets, firmware upgrades (first to 12.81 beta, as advised by Garmin Support and now to 13.00) but nothing helps, except switching off WHR. When it's off, then battery usage becomes more or less normal.

And it's not even the strangest thing which happens with the watch. Today I've tried to turn WHR on after SW upgrade to 13.00. Initially things looked a bit better, but the watch still went from 80% to almost zero in several hours. I've turned WHR off when I received a warning that battery was at 5% - it went back to 16% during next hour by itself. I didn't charge the watch.

Garmin Support told me that the issue is known and the team is working on solution, but couldn't provide any time frame for delivery. Also, when I asked about replacement, the answer was not reassuring to say the least, quote: " we cannot provide a replacement at this time as the new device will have the exact same problem."

I could not find any news about Garmin recalling watches so I do hope it's a SW issue that eventually will be fixed.

0 JasonCollins over 5 years ago

Never had any real issues with my F5 since I got it around 18 months back.
Upgraded to 13,00 and now I'm in trouble. This was yesterday, the only activity I done was a 1.5hr cycle.

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0 Andy_MetaAM over 5 years ago

i have the same issue - installed v13.00 few days ago and the battery drains very quicly - mostly at night times !!! went to bed the battery was 90% and when I woke up in the morning the battery was 46% ! Before updating the battery was ok

0 briviopc over 5 years ago

Hello
after a few days of testing (only clock and no activity for various problems) with the v13 firmware I came to this conclusion ... it sucks !!!
I have to recharge the watch after 4/5 days
I'm thinking of doing a firmware downgrade to version 11 or 12 or beta release.
tips?
thank you

0 Bisco86 over 5 years ago

Drain with 13.00 is even worse for me, battery lasts about 1,5 days without any activity, witch makes is almoust useless in the wild. the funny thing is the battery also drains while the device is turned off!!!
Batterylife used to be about 12-14 days...

0 BLAU over 5 years ago

I received a refurbished with v8, when sent mine for the battery problem, I updated to 12.21 and the battery last for 3 weeks (I have updates dissabled and it will remain like this for long), so ... think if the downgrade works is a good step back.

0 briviopc over 5 years ago

thank you
I will try 12.21 .. can you tell me how can I do?
I read something but I didn't understand correctly.
any other suggestions?
thank you