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Sudden battery drain on Instinct Solar

9220842
over 2 years ago

Hello

I've recently noticed that my Instinct Solar suddenly started to loose battery drastically (e.g., 10% during night). Normally, I'd go with 2 weeks without charging, now it has to be done every 3-4 days. The device itself is only half-year old so this is not related to loss of capacity in battery (also this was completely sudden).  Along with this problem, I've noticed that the device displays completely inaccurate solar intensity signal (some background signal of about 10% is noticeable thought the night or indoors). As many others, my device has also a problem with altimeter readings during the activities.

Following actions did not fix battery drain which is the biggest problem to me:

- soft reset

- factory reset

- update to 18.01 beta

I'm currently trying the roll back to 17.0. Do you have any other options if this won't fix battery drain?

Thanks !

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    Try disabling Bluetooth on the watch (option Phone), to test whether it is the culprit, as in some cases.

    Another possibility - there is currently an issue on some other Garmin models with high battery drain when Strava segments are enabled, or when you have any segment longer than 20km among your Favorites. On the GC Mobile app go to Training » Segments and in the top-right menu disable Strava segments if they are on. Then also review all Garmin segments listed on that page, and if there is any segment longer than 20km having a star, un-star it.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to trux

    Bluetooth should is probably not the cause of problem since I noticed same quick battery drain while using power saving mode which automatically disables BT (2-3% drop after 4 hours). I do not use Strava so this cannot be a problem.
    Thanks for answering

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to 9220842

    You can also just let it completely discharge, and then fully recharge. Although it is not the best practice doing it all the time, when you do it occasionally, you won't kill the battery. One of the often discussed possibilities of these rather common issues with battery after a firmware update, is the case when the battery calibration data gets reset during the update. The watch then needs to see the full charging cycle to recalibrate the battery gauge. It is quite well possible that there is in fact no unusual drain at all, just the battery meter does not work accurately.

    9220842 said:
    I do not use Strava

    Favorited Garmin segments longer than 20 km, according to Garmin Support can cause it too. Though I am not sure whether it is the case with Instinct 2 too, since it probably happens due to the uploading of the segment to the watch, and that feature is not supported by Instinct 2. One never knows though - due to the bug, the GCM app may be trying to push the segments to the watch anyway.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to trux

    I don't use Segments.
    I I tried to roll back software version to 17.0 and 16.5 but it still did not fix the problem. I'll check the complete discharge now.

    Thanks for suggestions.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to 9220842

    Unfortunately complete discharge did not fix the problem. After two days I have only 20% of battery left (would be probably even lower if not for the 6 hours in sun last day). For now I'm out of ideas how can I fix the problem myself.