16.11 Instinct 2 Solar battery drain issue.

As for how to try the older firmwares: enroll into the Beta Testing programme (find it on the top navigation menu here on the forums), then you would be able to find some FW versions which are not OTA, but can be downloaded to the device directly from your computer.

Alex said:

Nope, the problem remained. Looks like the firmware fries something on the motherboard, or some parts of the system are flashed in away which can't be reset.

Wow, that is so bad. I'm afraid it will be exactly the same with me.

Alex said:

I guess some of their developers are not getting their bonuses this time around.

I'm a relatively new Garmin user.
The gap between how I thought Garmin approached software and how it actually is is unbelievable. I don't know what the developers are doing, but it looks really bad. Total amateurism considering we're talking about a 33B corporation.

Alex, which option did you use when uploading previous firmware? "System_16.02" or "SystemBackdate_15.08"?

I went with the 15.08 backdate first. Tested for some time and flashed 16.02 after a day.

Then flashing back to 16.11 proved no difference...

That is sad to hear :( You recon I can go from 16.11 to 16.02 without backdate one? 16.02 was working fine for me.

As I understood from the description, only the backdate types of firmwares can actually  be rolled back to. I've tried flashing 16.02 onto 16.11, but that didn't work, and I went for the backdate one.

I do not believe your problems come from the firmware version. Everyone would have the same problems. On my mind it is either a problem of the lost battery gauge calibration (which can be easily re-established), or due to the settings (probably not, unless you changed some options again after rolling back the firmware), or due to bricked firmware of the Sensor or GPS firmware components (which you would notice, because the sensors would not work), or due to a hardware failure.

In the last two cases, only the Support can help you, but on my mind the first option is still the most probable reason. If you carefully follow the instructions from the guide, it may help you.

I have followed the battery drain guide, disabled gps, used battery saver modes, disabled sensors. Nothing helps get the battery life back.

My watch was updated when I was heavily using it for tracking my motorcycle trip, and it may have somehow interfered with the track recording and the automatic firware update somehow got messed up. I hoped re-flashing the watch would help, but it didn't.

So now the watch is with the Garmin service.

But don't you find it interesting that there are pther reports about the 24h battery life from other users after the same version update?

Alex said:

I have followed the battery drain guide

So how long did it take after you have charged one hour after the battery gauge reached 100%, till it shut down completely discharged? And how long did it take in the second cycle? Did you really do it exactly in this way? If not, the calibration was not fully reestablished.

Alex said:

But don't you find it interesting that there are pther reports about the 24h battery life from other users after the same version update?

No, not at all, because I see identical threads after each firmware release at every Garmin model, since the 6 years I watch this forum closely. And that was the exact reason why I wrote the guide.