Music Player Control is draining battery even when idle.

So if you have the music widget installed you have this drain and when it is removed from the widgets it stops? or is it fine to have the widget installed, but only open in glance view, which means not opened?

Isn't it expected that the battery consumption might be higher because of permanent data exchange, when you are playing music on your phone and it updates the widget permanently?

what I wanted to say: if you have the widget installed and you don't use it actively, but playing music on your phone, it is still draining? And to stop this draining, you would need need to remove this widget, if you want to keep bluetooth enabled for other things like notifications etc.?

Bernhard_Winter said:

what I wanted to say: if you have the widget installed and you don't use it actively, but playing music on your phone, it is still draining? And to stop this draining, you would need need to remove this widget, if you want to keep bluetooth enabled for other things like notifications etc.?

The draining is the same with or without looking at the widget.

I call it a widget but it more a function as there is shortcut already set on the Fenix by a long pushing of the Down button.

When a music player is launched from the paired smartphone, the Fenix reacts to it and start to be frantic with higher consumption.

so the drain starts as soon as you play some music on your phone without choosing the function on the watch to control music on the phone or does the drain only start when you open the music control on the watch?

the real widgets are basically active all the time in the background, so the widget might react as soon as you start playing on the phone, but from my understanding, if the music widget is not installed, also if there is a drain, it should only start, when you choose the music control funktion either in the menu or via hotkey, otherwise the watch should not care, if you are playing any music on the phone.

so basically, the only communciation regarding music between watch and phone should happen, when you either have the widget installed and running in the background or you choose the music control function manually.....or am I wrong?

I'm pretty sure Music Control keeps the Bluetooth radio active the whole time.  It's not Bluetooth Low Energy like the connection to your phone etc.  It's a fulltime active connection.  Thus the reason for the high battery drain.

muppetman said:

I'm pretty sure Music Control keeps the Bluetooth radio active the whole time.  It's not Bluetooth Low Energy like the connection to your phone etc.  It's a fulltime active connection.  Thus the reason for the high battery drain.

But was it always this way ? I don't remember noticing any battery drained for just listening to music on my old 5X, 5XPlus, even Instinct ....
That issue appears some months ago. Is this linked to earphones management ?

"Bluetooth: The drain created by Bluetooth is dependent on how many notifications come to the watch from phone, and how often the watch syncs with the phone. Occasional text notifications and use of other connected features will drain far less battery than continually receiving texts, answering the phone, running a music player, or getting weather updates."

from: "Features that Affect Battery Life on Outdoor Wearable"

From: https://support.garmin.com/en-SG/?faq=naK8xSw5bZ9Px40dlrCsv9

"running a music player"  I'm screwed.

what happens if you uninstall the music control widget from the widget list and don't start the music control function via menu or hotkey while you are playing music on your phone, do have also a drain then? As far as I understood from your description, the drain did only start, when you opened music control to see the song name, before that you had no drain, although music was running on the phone, right?

This would mean, as long as you do not open music control on your phone, there is no music data shared between the phone and the watch......

The watch has only one BLE connection......a bluetooth connection can either be low energy or full connection but not both. If the watch would be able to switch to normal bluetooth (non BLE) you would see a second pairing on your phone. You would need a standard connection to stream music from the phone to the watch, but this is not happening and the Garmin watches do have only BLE built in as far as I know.

But of course, if you open music control while you are playing music on your phone, the phone permanently updates the watch via BT about the song title, length of song, position in song, waiting for skip title by the user etc., so this might lead to a higher battery consumption.

But I don't think, that this happens when you do not actively open the music control functions on the watch. I can imagine, that haven the widget install might affect this, as widgets are permanently running in the background. But if you haven't installed the music widget and you do not start the music control function, I don't think, that the watch will care if you are playing music on your phone or activate any function by itself....

Bernhard_Winter said:

But of course, if you open music control while you are playing music on your phone, the phone permanently updates the watch via BT about the song title, length of song, position in song, waiting for skip title by the user etc., so this might lead to a higher battery consumption.

Today I have closed the music player on the smartphone (even launched a ram saver on the Samsung)
The Music Player on the watch was blank (no more name of the track displayed)

And I have continue without to go to battery saving to "reset" the BT connection to a more passive behaviour...

The result was a consumption of 1.5 - 1.8% by hour in idle mode !!
Like the Blue Tooth on the Fenix was still running at full RPM.

So... I will continue to switch to battery saver for some minutes after using the music player control on the Fenix.
Just to calm it down because other wise it will burn its battery...

There is an issue. The BT should go back to "passive" mode.