How I fixed my insane battery drain ( 2 - 5% per hour ) down to 0.3%

My Garmin 6 has had a lot of battery issues, and I was beginning to think that my battery was old since it felt like it only got worse and worse. My battery discharge could be anything between 2 - 10% per hour as you can see in the graph below (Charge 3). However, now it's completely fixed and my Garmin 6s Pro is back to around 9 days of battery time! Here's what I did. It really helped me a ton, and I hope it can solve someone elses battery issues as well!

Battery discharge

Here's what I did:

First thing I did is that I connected my watch to my computer and deleted all the folders and files I was able to delete. I then did a complete restart of the watch, and after that a reset. This did not solve anything, and I still had a horrible battery time after that. However, some people reported that it helped, since the bad battery could be due to corrupt files.
The next thing I did which indeed did help, is that I tried to disable the phone connection from within my watch. Either disconnecting, or using airplane mode should work. My battery time was improved straight away, and I realized that it was something odd with the connection between the phone and the watch. Some people also claimed that an old phone which is attempting to connect to the watch could seriously impact the battery time.
I uninstalled Garmin Connect and Connect IQ, and removed my Garmin 6s Pro from my phones bluetooth connection, and then reinstalled everything, and reconnected my Garmin 6s Pro to the phone.
The watch was then at around 90%, and you can see the result after this in the graph!

So if you are having trouble with your battery discharge, it could be due to:

Corrupt files on the watch - Remove all files, restart and reinstall
Bad connection between your current phone and the watch - Uninstall everything, remove bluetooth connection and reinstall/reconnect
An old phone which is attempting to connect to your watch - Make sure you remove bluetooth connections from all phones which are not your primary phone.

Top Replies

All Replies

0 Frankysour over 3 years ago

Great post and much kind of you to take the time to share your findings!

One questions:

premise - I always thougth normal that with phone connection shut off the consimption should be significantly less (though unsure how significant exactly), so never connected this with battery issues when connected...

question is... your "good" discharge graph in blue after the reinstall... is with phone normally connected, then?

in any case, again thanks!

cheers,

0 Danielsson88 over 3 years ago in reply to Frankysour

Yes, the blue graph is with the phone connected, so all notifications, etc from the phone work like normal, and the battery is draining so much less compared to before the reinstall/repairing-process. :-)

( I also tracked the battery discharge with the log from the beta installation, so that should be accurate )

0 Frankysour over 3 years ago in reply to Danielsson88

Great thanks for the answer!

Info have some higher than I would expect consumption on Fenix 6x, however not terrible but basically last equal or bit more drain than the regular size Fenix I used before, which should not be right...

I am a little esitant to delete all files as i would have to reinstall my apps and data fields, possibly also re-do all settings? But could try to delete the phone apps and connections a re-do those...

0 Danielsson88 over 3 years ago in reply to Frankysour

Yeah, removing all the files / reinstalling didn't do much for me at the time, but I heard other people solved battery issue by doing to this. (But like you said, you have to redo everything) For some people it was due to corrupt maps, so they removed the maps and reinstalled them through the Garmin Connect windows application. ( It takes a few hours to reinstall the maps, so move everything to a backup folder on your computer in case you have any trouble doing that )

Removing Garmin Connect / Connect IQ and repairing the watch is a quick process however, and doesn't really cause much issues. :-)

0 Frankysour over 3 years ago in reply to Danielsson88

Thanks again, I also just realized that I had connected the watch to another phone and on another connect account. Watch was already unpaired from the 2nd phone but the connect app was forgot there (always shut af far as I know, but with android you don't really ever know...).

First step... I removed the watch from the other account and the app from the 2nd phone, will see if just this starts making any difference.

0 4136991 over 3 years ago

Thanx for the tip!! Mine was resolved by a soft reset.

From 3 days to 20 days.

Looks like we need to reset after a software upgrade.

0 Danielsson88 over 3 years ago in reply to 4136991

That is great to hear! I'm glad you could solve it!

0 Maik over 3 years ago

The only thing I do, I quit the Connect IQ app on the phone.
When Connect IQ is not working in the background, the watch consumes much less power.

0 Frankysour over 3 years ago in reply to Maik

Hi, this is another interesting point... Connect IQ should not impact battery if not in use (meaning, not installing stuff or sending configurations to the watch), even if open... Seems the bt connection is most of the times the real issue for the Fenix!

Just to be sure I understand: you mean connect IQ shut down, while Garmin connect mobile regularly running and connected (and interacting with the watch, including weather updates, notifications pushed to watch, ... ), Correct?

0 Maik over 3 years ago in reply to Frankysour

Connect has permission to work in the background,
Notifications for example are important to me.

Connect IQ does not have permission for background work,
since then the consumption is fine