Battery life 11.14

I am on version 11.14 and my buddy is on the previous version (I believe 10.20). We were camping last weekend and had both charged our venu 3’s to 100% before leaving.  When we left on Sunday. I was on 14% and he was on 62%.  We have the same settings and did the same activities.  Is 11.14 that bad on battery?

  • You know when you think that will never work. Well, on this occasion initial results are good. Followed the procedure last night, by the morning 96%, 1 hour of tracked activity this eveing and still on 90%. Thank you.

  • Good!! I'm no expert but I believe there is a connectiion between battery consumption and Garmin pushed sw/fw updates and what's already installed on the watches, especially stuff like watch faces from ConnectIQ that are not Garmin. So, the tact I'm taking now that I'm getting acceptable battery life (7-9 days) is routinely check my SW version, currently 12.10. I probably check it more often than is necessary. As soon as I see the watch sw/fw has been updated, if I have a 3rd party app or watch face installed, I delete both, install a resident Garmin face. Connect my watch to Garmin Express, sync, charge to 100%, and check battery consumption for a few days.If it's in the 8%-11% range, I reinstall the watch face and monitor consumption for a few days. If okay, I smile and break out a cool one. If not okay, I do the little procedure I pasted in the entry on page 10. Bottomline, I think there is either a memory management issue and/or corruption occuring between the sw/fw updates and any installed non-Garmin things like watch faces especially if they hook into the operating system to get things like weather, etc. I could easily be wrong, but at the very least, something happens when these sw/fw updates get loaded. There may also be bluetooth issue but I personally haven't seen it. My watch and phone are always connected. Hope you've got it!!

  • Just to clarify, my watch is a 3s, so consumption in the 7-9 days range is acceptableto me.

  • I dont think they reference battery life in the 12.1 update but my Venu has gone from 3-4 days to 7 with the same settings doing the same stuff. a great improvement

  • I also think that something changed in the recent update. I had another battery problem - Garmin Connect was killing my phone battery, all the time! It was always the no. 1 consumer of battery and I had to charge my phone twice a day. I tried EVERYTHING and even spoke with Garmin support (they refused to accept that it's their app's fault). I only noticed that it helps when I put the phone to power saving mode, but then I was not getting all the notifications - that explained the drain as I have tons of notifications.

    BUT, last week, Connect stopped killing my phone battery, even though the phone is not in power saving mode. Now it can hold a charge for 1+ day again! So they probably fixed/improved something in the last update (either the watch itself or the Connect app).

  • Yep. I wonder if some people here confuse their Venu 3s with a Venu 3?

    My Venu 3s says it will last 10 days. That's fine! The update to 11.16 fixed my issues with battery life Slight smile
    For some minutes after charging it says even 11, but that is not realistic.


    I deliberately opted for the Venu 3s because if fits to better to my forearm and doesn't look oversized.

    The official Battery Life Information for Venu 3s and Venu 3:

    • Venu 3s == 10 days
    • Venu 3   == 14 days

    PS: I recommend turning on the "Battery Estimation" below Settings > System > Battery Manager.

  • I turned on "Battery Estimation" as recommended. I was going to ask where I read the estimation, when miraculously, the remaining day value showed up in the scrollable info.