Battery drain after 26.00

If you have so much problem with sw 26.00 just go back to the old one. Simple, My F6Pro solar is on the 26.82 beta and dont have life threatening bugs. In fact its faser than the 26.00 was, gps locks faster. Ihave phone conection off to because i am need more than 14days of battery. But i am in the gym for few hours eery day and i have training running on my watch and music too, still have over 20days of battery life. If using gps daily for an hour still running for 15 days. from 26.00 i went to 26.79 as soon it was out, than 26.81, not even a week later we had 26.82 I am sure that another sw is due soon.

Thanks Mezey for the alternatives. Yes, downgrade the sw is on the table as one of the last resources. Do you have any idea what year of manufacture your 6PRO Solar is? Just to be able to compare with mine and maybe to look for a clue/rule related to HW+SW.

Another option would be to join beta program, and see how it goes. But I am afraid that could be a problem for future downgrades.

Don’t waste your money the watch quality os poor and the bad software from Garmin is poor.

My watch are from 2020, got the mineral blue Solar Titanium with whitestone band, and titanium strap. Cannot remember the SW that was shipped with but i had update instantly.

Hi thanks for the response. I haven’t changed any settings and the battery misteriously dropped from 14 days every charge to ever day charge without any changes to the way I’m using it.  It isn’t even a year old so I would expect a lot more from Garmin.  I had my Fenix 3 for over 6 years and had no battery issues with it ever.   

I also saw similar high battery drain rates (1.2 to 1.5 percent per hour) with 26.00 on my Fenix 6 Pro Solar.  It is my opinion that there are likely multiple separate possible causes for the excessive drain.  Some watches may suffer from one cause of excessive drain while others may be plagued with multiple causes.  I have read through hundreds of forum postings on Fenix 6 excessive battery drain and I've tried every suggestion for fixing the issue.   What did not work for me was previous versions of firmware:  I tried unsuccessfully sideloaded firmware  15.20, 19.20, 20.80, 21.10 24.10,  26.00, 26.79 and 26.82.  Each and every one of those firmwares exhibited high battery drain, with no added widgets and only stock watch faces.  I even saw high drain when in battery saver mode, which rules out any of the sensors or wifi/BT comms.   Hard and soft resets also did not fix the issue.  What did work was a forum suggestion to connect the watch to a computer and to delete all files and folders that can be deleted.  This sounds drastic, but the firmware will automatically recreate the needed folders and files.  I first tried this when the watch was running 24.10:  attached the watch by USB cable to my computer and then deleted all files and folders except the file copyright.txt and the folder GARMIN\DATA (those were undeleteable).  After removing the USB cable, the watch restarted and to my amazement ran with "normal" battery drain, about 0.3 percent per hour. I ran with this firmware and drain rate for about a 2 weeks, charging the watch twice. I then let the watch update firmware to 26.00:  the high battery drain returned!!!!!    I sideloaded 24.20 and the high battery drain continued!!!   I then again deleted all files and folders except the two previously listed, and the watch then ran with normal battery drain.  I again updated to 26.00 and the high battery drain returned.   I then again went through the file/folder delete process and the watch then ran with normal battery drain.   I have now been running with 26.00 for about 3 days and I am seeing "normal" battery drain of about 0.3 percent per hour.   I'm speculating that the various firmware versions themselves are not the root cause of the drain.  There seems to be something wrong with the firmware update process that leaves the watch's filesystem in an undesirable state.  The watch CPU could be churning excessively (causing the increase battery consumption) because of the state of the filesystem.   The deletion of the filesystem causes the firmware to recreate the filesystem in a "good" state.

The fille/folder deletion method worked for me, your mileage may (and likely will) vary.   Use caution with this method, backup any watch data you don't want to loose.

FrankAgius said:

I'm speculating that the various firmware versions themselves are not the root cause of the drain.  There seems to be something wrong with the firmware update process that leaves the watch's filesystem in an undesirable state.

+1

Dont think is a firmware issue. I am on beta firmwares since the 21.xx never had batery drain issues unless something was wrong like an incompatible watchface was taking up more than it should be.