F6X Pro - I'm having problems with severe battery consumption during an activity. Wearing it around normally, battery consumption is reasonable, but as soon as I start an activity the watch burns 15-20% PER HOUR, which continues even after the activity is stopped/saved. no pulseox (well, only during sleep) HR strap and foot pod are connected WHR is off no backlight no bluetooth headphones connected / no music searching for tempe sensor (halfway through the activity I turned it off so it would stop searching, in case that was the problem) cold air, but watch internal temp sensor is reporting 70-80 F (21-26 C) under my sleeve, so battery should be warm This issue has been happening since 12.10 RC and now continues in 12.20. I have restarted the watch several times. I deleted the GarminDevice.xml. I sent outdoor.beta@garmin.com an email (no response), and I posted in the 12.10 RC thread. Something is really wrong -- the device should be capable of recording ~60 hours and I'm getting more like 5-6 out of a full charge. Standard everyday usage is no problem most of the time, but if I start and end an activity it starts burning power like crazy. This is a really bad bug! I'm pretty opposed to doing a reset and losing my settings for something that might not even help.

I agree to a point but often removal of software does not remove all traces. When an add-on is removed from a watch we have no idea if it’s just the name of the add-on that’s been deleted, all of the code, or something in between. That’s why sometimes a full reset to factory default is the way to the solution. I gave up adding anything from the CIQ store a long time ago. At first I was like a kid in a candy store but it did not take too long to realize there were too many problems occurring that were fixed by removing the add-ons. Now, without anything extra on my watches, I seem to have few problems. YMMV

12.20 + 12.10 battery consumption ~20%/hr during activity

multiades over 5 years ago

F6X Pro - I'm having problems with severe battery consumption during an activity. Wearing it around normally, battery consumption is reasonable, but as soon as I start an activity the watch burns 15-20% PER HOUR, which continues even after the activity is stopped/saved.

no pulseox (well, only during sleep)
HR strap and foot pod are connected
WHR is off
no backlight
no bluetooth headphones connected / no music
searching for tempe sensor (halfway through the activity I turned it off so it would stop searching, in case that was the problem)
cold air, but watch internal temp sensor is reporting 70-80 F (21-26 C) under my sleeve, so battery should be warm

This issue has been happening since 12.10 RC and now continues in 12.20. I have restarted the watch several times. I deleted the GarminDevice.xml. I sent [email protected] an email (no response), and I posted in the 12.10 RC thread. Something is really wrong -- the device should be capable of recording ~60 hours and I'm getting more like 5-6 out of a full charge. Standard everyday usage is no problem most of the time, but if I start and end an activity it starts burning power like crazy. This is a really bad bug!

I'm pretty opposed to doing a reset and losing my settings for something that might not even help.

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0 Fieser-Kardinal over 5 years ago in reply to Dr Phil

Is there a Battery Widget which is recommended and has a nice design that fits fenix 6 original widgets? I've already read that some of them even cause more drain when installed.

0 Dr Phil over 5 years ago in reply to Fieser-Kardinal

I have no idea. I just use my watch. I think I’d soon be aware of any abnormal battery usage.

0 susu42 over 5 years ago in reply to multiades

In my case, a soft reset after upgrading to 12.20 seems a have cured the problem: no more battery drain after activity (2 times already).

0 multiades over 5 years ago in reply to Dr Phil

Doesn't seem far-fetched to identify a SW/FW problem if something like this keeps popping up for different users with different updates. There is often someone commenting about an update causing excessive battery drain, even if it's not the majority of users. It sounds to me like a bug that occurs with some new software versions or is triggered at some point during the update process. I shouldn't have to periodically wipe my settings for updates to work normally. If all the betas through 11.75 worked perfectly and 12.10 suddenly shows severe battery drain, it's certainly not a hardware issue.

I've soft reset the watch like 5x. Overnight only 4% loss with puseox, but I haven't tried another activity yet.

0 Dr Phil over 5 years ago in reply to multiades

multiades said:
I shouldn't have to periodically wipe my settings for updates to work normally.

You shouldn't. I don't.

But explain to me why a problem with a few individuals reporting battery issues whenever a new version is released is a firmware problem because by that very definition it should affect all.

It's more likely something that the individuals concerned do or have done that is peculiar to their watch than a systemic problem.

0 2572376 over 5 years ago in reply to Dr Phil

what a load of rubbish.

It is a firmware issue because as in my case if I step back to a previous working firmware version, the problem goes away without any other changes to the watch. As a software developer of many years I would class Garmin firmware upgrades to be very fragile. As in there are always many seemingly random different things that go wrong on each upgrade and issues seem to be repeated or reappear in different guises. The software, if considered as a complete system seems to break very easily.

0 UliHe42 over 5 years ago

got 12.20 yesterday. loaded to 100%. run for about 3.5 hours including turn by turn navigation. 90% left, so no problem for me

0 Former Member over 5 years ago

Hi Multiades,

I faced same issues like you, today during a trekking I was losing 15% battery , and I tried to disable even stupid things , GLONASS or Pulse ( not OX which I don't use)

As you says afrer finish the workout, the watch does not stop to eat battery, kills the baterry at same level. The only way to avoid watch to eat the battery is HARD Reset and then don't open again a new activity like walk or trekking because if I opne a new activity then battery starts to go down as never even if I stop the workout.

Pathetic ... No comments ...

I have same option like you, and I did 5 hard resets ... Nothing solved nothing of nothing.

Maybe someone of Garmin should improve the QA. This is not first time I face this with Fenix 6. Each time we do upgrade we need to cross fingers.

I think is related to first wathces they delivered into market, HW revision , the new ones maybe dont face it, because they release with different chips.

0 Fieser-Kardinal over 5 years ago in reply to susu42

How do I perform a soft reset?

0 multiades over 5 years ago in reply to Dr Phil

Dr Phil said:
You shouldn't. I don't.

"I don't" seems to come with the subtext "and therefore you're doing something wrong".

Dr Phil said:

But explain to me why a problem with a few individuals reporting battery issues whenever a new version is released is a firmware problem because by that very definition it should affect all.

It's more likely something that the individuals concerned do or have done that is peculiar to their watch than a systemic problem.

Who knows why some devices are affected and others aren't. I read about people experiencing power drain with previous updates LONG before experiencing it myself. These are relatively homogeneous devices from a hardware standpoint, even if there are minor revisions. It's not like some user-configurable thing is responsible for the problem. Maybe updating beta 11.75 -> 12.10 instead of 11.77 -> 12.10 is at fault. Who knows! But I wouldn't put the mistake on the user - this is something that needs to be explicitly spelled out or taken care of behind the scenes by the developers. Plain and simple, it's a bug. And when I send [email protected] an email, I expect to be contacted for log files or receive acknowledgement that it's being investigated. Two emails, no response. It's definitely a problem and others have experienced it.