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Battery drains heavily - all of the sudden!

BhaSin
over 3 years ago

Hi all,

before I contact the Garmin Support, I wanted tpost it here. Maybe, others have the same issues. Actually, I have had the same issue before in May 2020. The Garmin support was great and has sent a replacement watch. This surprised me, as I thought it is more of a software issue.

Now, on the 7th of January, the same issue happened again - but with a different watch, of course. All of the sudden, the battery drained dramatically:

On the left side of the graph, you can see the normal drainage of the battery. I use the watch each for 2 to 3 activities, have a the PulsOX turned on only at night, do Pulse during the day, and do 500 to 1000 intensity minutes per week running, kayaking, cycling, rowing...

Usually, I have to charge the battery once a week, which is fine to me considering the heavy usage of the watch. Then, on the 7th the powe started to drain for no reason at all - no activity, no syncing and no WLAN turned on. Just sitting on my wrist and me on my desk. After that, the problem just persisted as can be seen by the screenshots below. I did a factory reset yesterday night, but that has had no effect. After charging it to 100% this morning, I am now at 84% three hours later.

The software version is 13.10. But it seems to be unrelated to that. I did not drop the watch. 

I hope somebody has an idea what to do.... I really enjoy my watch but now it has become unpredictable...

Best,

SB

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to BhaSin

    It might help to nail down what the problem is. The current "theory" is that the GPS is still running in the background, even though you're not doing an activity anymore.  The stats the widget provides shows you how much "time spent: the watch has done powering things like that.

    It's not going to fix it, but it will hopefully provide some details you can share with Garmin.

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    I noticed that the problem is wifi enabled.

    Try turning off wifi and see if it improves.

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    just received my garmin tactix delta yesterday, installed all updates and it was fine during the day, but I lost 40% battery ober night :( no third party watch face, no pulse ox enabled.....bluetooth was on but phone was in flightmode, so no connection......I had wifi enabled, so maybe this was the problem, although it should connect only on purpose, I disabled it now, did a couple of reboots and hard resets and charged it to 100%, hope this helps, wèll see.

    I had no such problems before with my fenix 5x and I‘m quite familiar with technology, so I don‘t think, I habe done anything unusual, which could have caused this drain.....

    it is always like russian roulette with garmin and bugs......

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Bernhard_Winter

    I had tried everything with an only month-old 6X Solar Pro. Was down to like 2-3% of battery drain per hour. Long fight with Garmin, they insisted on checking the watch by themselves for user setting errors, software errors, you name it.

    Finally received a new watch. Knocking on wood. Same setting, battery usage again what is advertised and what it should be.

    This Russian roulette with Garmin devices is worrisome. Heard about it before buying my first Garmin watch, thought it's business as usual with just a few users affected. But it seems more serious. Don't understand why they don't have serious QC before releasing firmware and other software updates.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Daran

    well, I'm used to pain with garmin quality, I had WHR problems etc. on my Fenix 5x Plus and I know that some things might not work as advertised, I'm already very tolerant as I generally like the Garmin Watches, but this is crazy for a 900 Euro device......I disabled now Wifi and the Altimeter calibration outside activities, those are the only settings that I think might drain the battery, and I will disable bluetooth during the night as I don't need it anyway. After a full charge about 6 hours ago, it looks pretty normal now, with BT turned on and connected to my phone. It still shows me 22 days left, if I disable bluetooth it shows my 32 days left......so let's see how it goes till tomorrow morning....

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Bernhard_Winter

    Well, this thread has been long, but - at least - in my case, Wifi is not the culprid! I never have WiFi on and the battery drainage happened nevertheless all of the sudden.

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    It is probably thanks to an app update. I had it because of some installed watchface. After I removed them it was fine

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to muppetman

    Here are some screenshots with the "Device usage"-widget enabled. I still got only two days of usage from a full charge with the watch being on "Low power" most of the time. GPS was on only for 1 hour, the other activities were indoor activities. 

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    My Fenix 6 is doing the same on production firmware. Went from 5 days predicted -> 1 day -> off in the course of 36 hours. That was with battery saver engaged.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Fursty_Ferret

    Same here. I've had my Fenix 6 pro for about 6 months now. Till now, I've been happy with the battery life, getting around 10-14 days depending on use. 

    I charged it last night and I'm at 66% now with no activities.  I've been playing with different watch faces lately but they haven't had a significant impact on battery life earlier.