Fenix 7 Sapphire Solar - Poor Battery life after 8.37

The only thing more impressive than your battery life is the amount of sun you're getting. Hope you're taking precaution and using sunscreen!

What GPS mode do you use? Normal? All systems? All systems + multi-band?

And still I do not know how to get to this stats page. I have FW version 9.31b and I don't have this one under widgets.

I use AutoGPS selection (SatIQ)

Maybe the beta no longer has the widget? For the Fenix 6 firmware alpha and beta both have Device Usage widget but maybe this is different on the Fenix 7?

I do not see a good reason to move from 9.14 personally so I will not be able to answer your missing widget question.

Then that makes it really hard to tell what's your GPS consumption based on this table. You said that 2 hours of GPS take you about 8% (did you notice that in the hours after an activity there seem to be higher consumption?)

I also checked when I had 9.14b and I didn't see the widget there either... Strange.

talsela said:

I also checked when I had 9.14b and I didn't see the widget there either... Strange.

Too be honest, if you are not finding it in 9.14 either then you are doing something wrong,

You need to Add the widget with the + option, it is not there by default. You would not 'see' the widget it you did not know it existed or know that is has been a standard feature of beta firmware for the last 3 years or longer. 

talsela said:

Then that makes it really hard to tell what's your GPS consumption based on this table. You said that 2 hours of GPS take you about 8% (did you notice that in the hours after an activity there seem to be higher consumption?)

This is the battery usage from yesterday's hike - I can only report what the watchface % reports before and after the activity.

But double checking my figures, they are correct - start of day was 15% then end of hike was 7% - this was autoGPS (satIQ).

5135968 said:

You need to Add the widget with the + option, it is not there by default

Yes, I understood that part. You do mean the widget glances, right? I have nothing of the sort there. Could there have been some "developer mode" you activated in the past that made this widget available for the adding? And is this surely not a Connect-IQ widget you installed in the past? Definitely native Garmin pre-installed?

talsela said:

Definitely native Garmin pre-installed?

Definitely. It has been in all beta and now alpha since the last 3 years I have used Garmin.

However I accidentally upgraded to 9.31 yesterday morning when I had to charge my battery connected to laptop - and in 9.31 Device Usage is not there! So it looks like maybe only this in alpha firmware now?

Luckily 9.31 has not damaged my battery life.

100% on recharge Tuesday AM

23 hours later

And somehow still 95% after 2 hours GPS...!! Good solar effect again I think?

I am surprised I am still on 95% after 32 hours too be honest.

So in the worst case scenario your watch lost 5,4% (100% -> 94,6%) in 23 hours which equates to 17,75 days per charge. I'm supposing this was without solar help?

Mine is contanstly draining faster - my average is always 13-14 days. Funny enough, I had another device until recently. It was replaced as it was believed to have a hardware issue, and that one did manage to average close to the spec 18 days.

I'm wondering if the units can vary that much for hardware reasons in terms of battery life?

It is a bit more usage this time around.

Yesterday 3 days after recharging to 100% on Tuesday this was my battery 

I did a 30 minute run and 40 minute walk with GPS on 18th August - this was early in the day so no solar benefit.

I think this time I will get 12 to 13 days maximum.

That's 19% drained in almost 73 hours including over 1hr GPS. Since my last charge I've had a 20% drain in 68 hours without any activity (and hardly any solar charge)

Actually that is about 3 hours of GPS so far as I did a 2 hour bike ride on Wednesday (which seemed to use very little power somehow)

Right now just under 4 days after charging to 100% I am now at 76%.

One very common thing I see in Garmin forums is that after a firmware update battery life can become worse. I have seen this myself on the Fenix 6 and as you can see in this thread, you are not alone.