Inreach mini horrible battery life

I just turned on my new mini last night after giving it a full charge. I turned it on and activated it around 7 or 8pm. I got the necessary responses from the satellites in an open outdoor spot. The battery was down to 75% but I figured it because of activation and pairing my phone etc. I turned Bluetooth off and Tracking is off. As far as I know it was doing nothing all night. It was sitting inside and it did receive another message from Garmin attempting to get me to spend more money. That’s it. 12 hours after I originally turned it on, I had 40% battery life left. I can’t possibly imagine if I had Tracking on or pressed SOS. The battery would die in 4 hours.

Is is it constantly trying to find a satellite all night even though there is no usage? Anyway, it’s incredibly underwhelming and going back unless I’m making a serious mistake.

What am I doing wrong? I’d consider the Explorer. It’s pretty big for my needs. I’ll use this for Safety, not lots of mapping or anything.

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0 Johnny555 over 5 years ago

Update, the screen came on last night and stayed on with the new message from Garmin, and when I got home today the same thing. The screen was on with another new update from Garmin. Screen is on 50%. Do I need to set it so the screen turns off? I mean this thing should sleep the way I’ve got it set up. I’d expect 100 hours of carrying it around for emergencies only.

0 Johnny555 over 5 years ago

It’s under 24 hours and the battery is just about dead. 10%

0 maak over 5 years ago

If you're not using it for reporting/mapping, then you may consider what I do. I carry it turned off. If I need it, for messaging or weather, I turn it on. Takes less than a minute (even in canyons of Utah), and it's got a lock. In the event of an SOS, I will never need to question the battery life. From the many posts, seems one sacrifices size and weight for battery life. For me, that's okay. For you, that may be different.

0 Johnny555 over 5 years ago

Thank you Maak. I did have that thought. However that defeats the purpose in a lot of ways. How long will this last in an actual emergency? A few hours? There is definitely something amiss in that it keeps checking for email every hour and I can’t figure out how turn that off, and the screen is set to shut down in 15 seconds and never shuts off.

The 50 hour claim with 10 minute check in on, and message usage is over by a factor of 10.

My my inclination is to up it to the Explorer. The posts on the difference in battery life I’ve read say it really lives up to the claims. 10 minute intervals, plus texting etc, and at the end of he day you still have 50%, and if conservative you still have 75%.

Mini i is not a product I can recommend. If I’m lying there with a broken ankle the trees don’t have power outlets in them. As it is I got a 10,000mah power pack which is very heavy for the claimed battery life of the mini. That pack ways more than 2 or 3 Explorers.

0 Bob_qx over 5 years ago

For comparison, here's my experience with an Explorer+ used all over the U.S. Southwest, flatlands to mountains and canyons. With Send Interval off and tracking at 1 minute interval, in a typical day I use 7-10% of battery with the unit on and tracking for 8-12 hours; sometimes on at idle for an hour two of that time. I send/receive 1-3 messages per day, + an occasional weather forecast. Screen is set to turn off after 3 minutes. I have the default setting for checking new messages while on.

+1 twolpert over 5 years ago

I suspect you are getting unrealistically low results because you are allowing the unit to run inside. Indoors, it's going to run both the GPS radio and the Iridium radio much more than it would outdoors with a more or less clear view of the sky. And yes, it's going to generate a certain amount of radio activity whether or not you are tracking.

The hourly check for messages is a feature, not a bug. It's a long story, but basically the passive message check (periodically listening for message traffic without proactively transmitting to the Iridium network) is easy on the battery but completely inadequate in real-world scenarios. As a result, the unit does an "active" check hourly. That is, it actively asks the network if there are messages waiting. I don't know retry details - but it's going to try very hard to complete that operation. If you run the unit indoors, or anyplace else with a poor sky view, it's going to eat the battery.

The biggest battery hogs are the radios (both GPS and Iridium) and the back light. I can't tell from your post if the back light is staying on all the time or not. The Mini has a display which is very readable without the back light as long as the is adequate ambient light. In addition to setting the brightness (you mention 50%), you should set the timeout (just below brightness on the settings menu for Display) to the shortest interval that works for you. Note that the timeout is from your last key press, so if you are actively poking buttons, it'll stay on no matter how you set it. If you set it to Always On, it's going to eat the battery.

The only way to tell what you're going to get in real-world conditions is to test in real-world conditions. That is, outdoors and moving. You will get unrealistically low battery usage if you try to test outdoors and stationary. This is because the unit automatically moves to 4-hour tracking when it detects that it's stationary. You will see unrealistically high battery usage if you try to test indoors. See above.

All of that said, the battery in the Mini is much lower capacity than the ones in the larger units (Explorer and Explorer+, for example). The functionality is very similar, so you would expect to (and will) get much longer run times with the larger units.

0 Johnny555 over 5 years ago

You’re right. I learned a lot about these. I was letting it run indoors. It was working hard trying to maintain it’s connection to the network. There were also a lot of other things I didn’t realize.

This is is a device you turn on when you begin a trek, and turn off when you stop or sleep. It should never be in ‘indoors.’ That’ll just killl the battery. If you’re sleeping in a tent, it’s turned off. If there is an emergency the SOS button activates the entire device without you turning it on.

You can also, especially with the Mini, just leave it turned off. Turn it on to send a few messages and get the weather for a little while, or to activate SOS. It seems to defeat the purpose in some ways, but I can see that as viable considering how absolutely tiny the Mini is.

I think i wouid prefer the Explorer SE+ so that I’m not too conserned about battery. It is about the size and weight of a big iPhone, but I like the it. I got my hands on a real unit (not a hollow fake) at Cabelas today. Nice machine for sure.

With maps and logging and navigation and SOS scenarios having that big battery is going to make the Eplorer+ unit more versatile for me.

0 twolpert over 5 years ago

Note that the SE+ and Explorer+ are not the same device. The Explorer+ has maps; the SE+ does not.

0 SahbaA over 5 years ago

This is is a device you turn on when you begin a trek, and turn off when you stop or sleep. It should never be in ‘indoors.’ That’ll just killl the battery. If you’re sleeping in a tent, it’s turned off. If there is an emergency the SOS button activates the entire device without you turning it on.

Where did you read that the the SOS button turns on and activates the device when the device is turned off? This is very useful for how I use the InReach Mini but I can't find any documentation that states this.