After 18.10 update my battery went down from 53% to 10% in only one night...!

Even in Battery Save mode, without any Bluetooth connection, no Pulse Ox, no Sleeping Monitor and without Hear Rate monitor.
What happened to my Instinct Solar?
I hope GARMIN will fix this serious problem as soon as possible.
It's incredible that to fix a problem (altimeter) can creates another one...!
Can my Instinct Solar fully function correctly as it did several updates ago?

Top Replies

1752329 over 1 year ago +2

I found that turning the compass OFF in settings gave me huge (back to normal?!) battery life again. I re-enabled the compass, but set to AUTO instead of on and now the battery life seems to work properly…
Squizzo over 1 year ago +1

After every upgrade there's battery drain (SIC!). To fix the problem you must restore the watch into settings options.
8082257 over 1 year ago in reply to Squizzo +1

doesn't help!

fully discharge and fully charged overnight

hard reset (CTRL button long press)

factory reset

updates/downgrades

still down from 100%(24d) to 0 during 1-2 days.

All Replies

0 Squizzo over 1 year ago

After every upgrade there's battery drain (SIC!). To fix the problem you must restore the watch into settings options.

0 8082257 over 1 year ago in reply to Squizzo

doesn't help!

fully discharge and fully charged overnight

hard reset (CTRL button long press)

factory reset

updates/downgrades

still down from 100%(24d) to 0 during 1-2 days.

0 Mike over 1 year ago

Mine stayed 100% overnight...shows the % if I connect to a charge cable otherwise says 27d

0 7534899 over 1 year ago in reply to Squizzo

I have done a SOFT RESET (by pussing CTRL button till it's off) and then i turned on again. It seems quite OK for the moment. I will fully charge it and see what it happens. In the other hand, one alarm has sound and I don't know why (there was no alarm set.)...? It looks like this last update makes the Garmin get completely crazy. Let's see in the oncoming days... Thank you.

+1 1752329 over 1 year ago

I found that turning the compass OFF in settings gave me huge (back to normal?!) battery life again. I re-enabled the compass, but set to AUTO instead of on and now the battery life seems to work properly again. Could be worth a shot?

0 7534899 over 1 year ago in reply to 1752329

With the SOFT RESET I did I resolved my problem but thank you very much for your idea. I'll keep it in mind.

0 Mike over 1 year ago

Did 1 night 28mi loop this weekend in Adirondack NY using Solar in hike/navigate function. After, 17.8 miles, 7000 ft elevation gain, the watch just frozen (fully charged) ... cant do anything ! Temp was about 45F. Wow...maybe elevation gain killed it, lol

0 Alex Hough over 1 year ago

I have the exact same problem. I've done restarts, soft resets, factory resets, disabled compass, disabled pulse ox, disabled, reset and didn't pair to my phone, disabled activity tracking, put is battery saver mode. The watch is lasting longer after all of this, but still less than a full day on a full charge.

I wish I could roll back the firmware, but I can't find the older version.

0 Alex Hough over 1 year ago in reply to Alex Hough

It turns out that each public release candidate comes with the rollback firmware to the last official release. I was able to download the 18.10 release candidate and use the rollback installer. I've now gone back to 17.50, and will report back my findings. If anyone else is looking for the 17.50 installer it's included in the download here:

forums.garmin.com/.../instinct-solar---18-10-public-release-candidate

0 Alex Hough over 1 year ago in reply to Alex Hough

I rolled back to 17.50 and the battery drain issue went away. The problem was that my HR monitor and Pulse OX stopped working. I then upgraded back to 18.10 and the battery drain issue was back, but my sensors were still not working. They just released 18.41 beta today. I'm going to install that now, and see if it resolved any of these issues.