Solution to battery drain? (New issue for me)

I've seen lots of posts on battery drain, and given them a cursory look but have always been happy with the life on my Fenix 6X Sapphire.

Until now.  I don't know what's changed in the last couple of weeks, but it's getting absolutely ridiculous now.

The original battery monitor app I was using had me at 0.7%/hour, which is a 6 day battery life (no GPS activities)

I did a soft-reset today (the one that keeps your activities and music but clears everything else), and put Battery Gauge on and charged to 100%

Now it's on 68%!  In 5 hours!  With a run that was 1hour 8minutes long.

In comparison, when I first had the watch I ran a 50 miler in 10 hours with full GPS and the watch went from 100% to 80%.

Is there a solution to this issue?

I'm assuming it's a sync problem with Garmin Connect as that's the only part of the link that could have changed (I'm on the latest non-beta watch software but that was released in January and the battery problem has only been apparent for a few weeks).  Having said that, I turned off the Phone connection yesterday for about 8 hours and it didn't seem to make a significant difference to battery drain (hence the reset this morning).

I do long events - 10 to 36 hours - and right now this watch will be flat before the end.

Any help much appreciated!

  • Quick update...

    The above screenshot (69%) was at 1817 today.

    It's now 2002 and the battery is at 54% (so that's 15% lost in 1 hour  45 minutes).

    I think I may be chasing a phantom here and I reckon this ultra-severe drain will sort out with a reboot (which I'm just about to do) - will see if it's still going down quickly in a couple of hours.

  • For me it is from 13.10 that the battery began to drain faster, but in the order of 12-13% in a day without GPS but with connection to the phone, notifications and heart rate sensor. It normally drained 4-5% per day. Now I'm doing some tests, with phone connection but without heart rate sensor it is consuming 0.25% per hour, which is almost normal consumption. In battery saving mode the consumption is about 1.6%. Could it be that there is a bug in the heart rate sensor and in the bluetooh?

  • I was looking at the optical HR sensor an hour ago or so and I’m sure it used to flicker a lot, and now it seems to be on constantly, which could certainly account for higher drain.

    My WHR version is 1.00.02, (sensor hub 8.00 but I’m not sure if that is connected to the WHR).

    I’m waiting for another hour or so to confirm that the drain is still at stupid levels after a power cycle, then I’ll turn off the WHR and see if things get better.

  • Hi

    I posted a similar thread here https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/fenix-6-series/257040/fenix-6-pro---20-power-drain-in-3-hours-update-now-8-loss-in-43-minutes-proof-in-photos

    I've been tracking this for several days now.

    So...if you save an activity on the watch but don't upload it (disable WIFI and BT phone connection) you do not get post-activity drain. Only after uploading does the drain start.

    So what I am doing, and this really is no workaround who likes to have their phone connected to their watch! - is just to enable BT to sync and then disabling the BT connection after sync. This has solved the drain for me - turn on bluetooth, wait for the 'Complete' text to appear on your watch face so you know the sync. went OK, then disable BT.

    I've forwarded my findings with logs etc to Garmin, I suggest you do the same too, helps to get more eyes on the problem.

  • That’s good investigation, I’ll give that a go as I have some data points from today with everything “as normal” so would be a good time to see if disconnecting the phone helps.

    So far today is better than yesterday:

    0827: 81%
    1052: 79%
    1405: 70%
    1525: 63% 

    That’s pretty erratic drain, but far better than yesterday.  Still looking at probably using 30-40% battery in a day though Grimacing

    I’ll switch the phone connection off and see what the next 8 hours or so brings.

  • For comparison, my drain today:

    67% 9:20 AM UK time

    66% 09:51 AM UK time after 20 minutes cardio (still on device only, not uploaded)

    65% 03:29 PM UK as I type this.

    My last charge to 100% was on Tuesday 16th, 2:37 PM UK time - since then I've done 3 1/2 hours of cycling with GPS, 1 hour of running with music in that time and various cardio activities. I'm keeping everything on the watch and just uploading every second day now. As it workaround it works, but not ideal for those who want to be connected to their phone.

  • Oh wow, that’s a massive difference!  

    I switched the phone connection off 40 minutes ago and it’s gone down 1% (but it could have been right on a % boundary so I’m not taking this as failure yet)

    Hopefully I’ll be looking at 62% still in a few hours... fingers crossed!

  • I've given up and just plug my watches in to charge before I shower each day.

  • Right, phone switched off on the watch and it’s lost 2% in 5 hours.  That’s far better than it was, but still only around half the estimated 23 days that the watch should run for.

    (Note I’m using stock watch face and have no ConnectIQ widgets installed other than the battery gauge one which possibly could now be the cause of the difference above)

    So agreed - this is a workaround.  But a very poor one... Garmin, any chance of fixing this one?