Hi Everybody, I guess many of you have suffered like me the frustrating experience of having your beloved watch drain the battery far faster than expected. I have searched the forums, read many of the suggestions, tried them but realised that what I wanted was to have my watch perform as it should -- that is, I want to use BT, WiFi, Music, GPS and cover 8+ hours of weekly exercise without a worry about recharging the battery every day, but rather every 5 days or so.
So, I contacted Support, but my watch was apparently out of warranty because it was 18 months old. Then I decided that I would investigate directly and lost the fear of opening it up and take the guts out... daunting, warranty voiding and ebay-sell forfeiting.
But worth it. Here's what I did and found out.
I suspected it was the battery because I am a power user... -- I bought a replacement that came with 600mAh instead of the stock 480mAh. It did not fix the issue. I did check the current consumption and set up an external power supply and coulomb counter, and it was all in check.
I then suspected Wifi, BT or GPS silicon issues. No. All good.
In the end I think it is a matter of the Power Manager (Maxim 20303) and SW, and poor battery calibration after a SW update.
What did the trick for me was to put the original battery back, then you get various odd readings of voltage and capacity estimation, which you correct with several iterations of full reset, charge, full reset, charge, until the battery is recalibrated by the SW and the PMIC itself. I am now back to having a fully functional watch, but I had bought an Enduro and it is difficult to go back to the 6x, unless I need maps.
Hope you find this useful -- I can provide more details if anyone is interested.
