When firmware developers add batery charge in %?

It's not smart design!  Thousands of user ask about changes but you ignore it. Good! Why don't you make this feature in Garmin Connect App? It's very easy to add three lines of program code and show % of battery charge in App. It can compensate ugly design.

How about remaining days like in the Solar version, then?

So should i consider every bar is 20% ?

Yes, each bar represents 20%.  So, if your watch is displaying 3 bars, do you have 41% or 60% remaining?  A design choice by engineers doesn't mean it's better in my opinion. 

OK so my battery indicator is now always reading 5 bars??

It stays at 5 bars, until it just turns off because the battery is dead.

Was running v12.2 and it started doing this about 3-4 weeks ago.  Tried updating to beta 12.85 and still does the same thing.

When I start the watch in test mode, it correctly shows the battery charge state (in %).

How do I fix this?

Chris! Using old school bars to show battery charge volume looks like Nokia 3310 style design from XX century, but we all living in XXI century, except your smart firmware designers who provide all Instinct users his/her grandma's world vision. No! No! No! it's inconvenient and useless to user to see bars instead of % indication. If you can't do it in Instinct watch firmware, do it in Garmin Connect App! I want to live in XXI century and don't want to use "Nokia 3310" style. All Instinct users are very angry of this! But for unexplained reason, Garmin deny customers feedback and instead of fixing this fail, just issued strange explanations why it can not be fixed. But as I know in Solar version battery charge shows in %. So what's your difficulties? I cant see it and can only say it's a lazy.

Sup4you said:

I want to live in XXI century and don't want to use "Nokia 3310" style

Looks like you did not really understand where the evolution goes. Oppositely to what you think, in XX century, the software used to be quite customizable, detailed, and made for geeks. In XXI century each new release of software, firmware, or OS, makes them more and more primitive, with stupid simplistic layout and graphics, and with less and less options and minimal possibility of customization or analyzing tools. I think the manufacturers assume (probably by right) that users are getting more and more stupid, and many of them cannot even read, so using 5 bars instead of digits will allow a bigger part of the population to use their devices.

1.Try to tell me how much power in you battery if you see 3 bars: 41% or 59%? Of how much power you have at 1 bar: 1% or 19%?

2.Please, don't simplify people.

3. Don't be freelance advocate to someone's (firmware designer, it's obvious) fail.