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Firmware 13.20 Garmin 520 massive battery drain

After only 2hrs, my edge goes from 100% to 5%, low battery warning and just dies.

This is only happening since the last firmware update, before that it was holding for 4-5 hrs always on.

Help!

  • I'm afraid the battery is failing. Even at 4-5 hours it was in poor condition

  • Can confirm, a definite battery draining issue post 13.20 firmware update.  How do we remedy?

  • Happened all of sudden - before that update it was good for 7-8 hrs rides, I doubt it's battery failing.

  • Hi

    Batteries can suddenly fail, so it’s still the most likely cause, but check if it’s getting hot. If the battery was OK and the run time has gone from 8 hrs to 1 hr, it would mean that 8 times more power was being used and the 520 would be getting quite warm as that energy has to go somewhere.

    Try running it from a USB power bank. Even a small one should last all day if the 520 is OK.

  • Peter, thank you for your feedback and insight.  I am however still convinced that the issue is the firmware update to 13.20.  Please advise as to how a rollback would be done to 13.10 or even 13.00 since that is when last there were no battery life issues?  Surely this will also be a good exercise to identify whether or not the firmware update is in actual fact not the problem.  

    May I just also add that I dont think using a power bank is at all an option for me, sorry.

    Please advise.

  • Unfortunately, the 3rd party site that held archives of old firmware versions appears to have been shut down and I don’t know of any other alternative source. Unless you can locate a copy of an earlier version somewhere, it may not be possible to rollback.

  • Definitely extra battery drain issue after the 13.2 update. 3 hours use would leave me with 60% before update, now its 30%.

  • If you have the means, you could measure the current drawn from an external USB power bank, with the internal battery fully charged*. Mine draws about 70-80mA (BT, GPS, Glonass, no sensors) and that hasn’t changed from 12.1 and 13.0 even though the battery lasts nowhere near as long as it used to.

    *Leave the unit switched off and on charge for a couple of hours after it reaches 100% before testing to make sure it is really fully charged. It takes a while to settle down to a background level of about 10mA.

    For what it’s worth BT, GPS, Glonass and low backlight settings don’t have a big effect on current drawn. 100% backlight nearly doubles it.

  • Yip the same issue here ... Thought it was just me or the unit was getting old. 

  • After replacing the battery I've still got 30% left after a 10 hour ride. No other changes in usage pattern or settings