Abysmal Instinct Solar software quality, as feared, but not really expected. Where is the pride necessary to produce something good beyond the Garmin echo-chamber?

Update: By all measures, this whole saga is actually getting *worse* by the moment. Although we had a full day of sunshine, and I barely used the GPS on the Instinct Solar for more than a few minutes, the battery, from being charged fully just 24 hours before, has fallen to 61 percent!

This, also, is absolutely abysmal, and clearly proves that Garmin isn't even able to get their act together on totally basic things like promised battery life. What do I need solar charging for, when in comparison my Vivoactive HR lasted for 10 to 14 days on a single charge every single time?

Wow, this is just *so bad*.

Update 2: I am adding my comment from another thread here, to summarise my thoughts in one place:

What frustrates me about Garmin is that there is so much good there. But then it feels, like with Nokia (remember the old Nokia?), the beancounters always win and ruin the products.

With the Instinct / Solar, memory seems like the limiting factor for everything. Tide station data can simply not be stored, because there is no space. Real-time analysed activity and sleep data, large amounts of tracks and waypoints, who needs any of that, if we can constantly sync it to and from the cloud, right?

Except - who needs a 'smartwatch' if it basically is no more than a dumb terminal to a constantly linked mobile phone? Apart from an altimeter and a pulse sensor, any modern phone can do so much more than the best smartwatch.

It all feels very much like a Garmin bubble, where everyone says, 'but hey, the influencers like it, the superficial money spending lifestyle people like it, and the I-jog-around-a-park-three-times-a-week types like it. And as Garmin are in every sporty retail store in the world, why should they care about anything else? It's all about the image and the bottom line.

That leaves you with the real outdoor types. The long distance hikers. The surfers. The adventurers. But they are ten per cent at best.

So why should they care? They stopped listening many years ago, it's so much simpler for them that way.

Update: I want to elaborate on one aspect a bit more - software quality. I don"t think Garmin software developers are per se not talented. I do, however, think that the software philosophy at Garmin leaves *a lot* to be desired. The whole thinking is like the worst version of 'Agile' software development, where basically every first public sales release is beta quality and then, after months to years, it approaches the normal release quality you would actually expect on day one.

I am not sure if the developers at Garmin think 'it's pretty cool what we get out of this tiny bit of hardware and a lot of the time it works' or rather 'I hope my supervisor continues to not really care about the details as long as he can sell this semi-trainwreck to upper management in a clever way'.

I really don't know. But I, personally, would be ashamed.

I don't know what to tell you other than it sounds like you got a lemon. Mine is awesome and everything I want it to be. Gps fix takes 10-15 seconds. My battery lasts about 12 days with an hour plus of GPS activities each day. IMO the Instinct Solar is the best smartwatch Garmin has made to date. No frills, just great battery life and performance in my experience. I'd highly recommend exchanging yours.

Basically, sure, I could just give this one back and get another, and I probably will. However, just reading through the forum posts, battery problems seem to affect many people here, so I believe this is either a basic hardware problem on many models, or a basic software problem, possibly connected to one of the many subsystems like GPS, pulse sensor etc. Also, 12 days is nowhere near what Garmin promises when it says 'up to 24 days, or up to 30 days with solar in smartwatch mode'. My watch is not connected to my phone, so it can't (and I don't want it to) take advantage of GPS-almanach-data it gets from the phone. As I said, if this watch is basically a 'dumb' terminal, what's the point? I don't need it for jogging, this is, like for many other people posting here, meant as a GPS / ABC watch backup for when the phone or navigation unit dies. And for that, it's pretty useless.

There were indeed battery life problems with at least two particular firmware versions. You should connect to your phone and update. What you experience is not common and does not happen to everyone, every day.

I am also getting more than a week of battery life with at least 7 hours of GPS activities plus more non-GPS activities. "up to 24 days in smartwatch mode" is well described in the manual and it means "tracking the steps per day, the sleep and the heart rate, including everything related to it, such as stress, body battery, etc". I would certainly expect less life when using the GPS.

As for the GPS, you do not need to use your phone at all. You can get the GPS almanac from the satellites, but you will have to start a GPS activity and wait for 20 minutes or so. After that, the watch will use the file and it'll get GPS lock in seconds. That is, until the file expires, which usually happens within a week. But personally, I do not want to do that and sync every morning. I also do not want to stay linked 24/7, but syncing once a day is not such a big deal.

Your other points sound completely valid. Software quality is so-so, and memory space indeed limits the capabilities of the device. However, I really doubt the developers are the ones to be blamed.

For every person posting about their battery life here there are several more who don't have issues guaranteed. People don't tend to post when they don't have issues unless they are tech enthusiasts like me. 

You're right that 12 days isn't 24 days, but that's 12 days full of GPS usage, which is a high drain activity. Even at full charge GPS can only be used for 18 hours. It sure seems like you have unrealistic expectations for the watch, even if your copy isn't performing as usual.

Sounds like you just need to get back to your trusted Vivoactive HR.