vivoactive 4/4s SW 4.00 is now live

Yep, a Vivoactive 4.  Battery widget says it has been 5 days and 15 hours since my last charge and I am at 49%.  I have a little over 4 hours of GPS running tracked so far this charge, plus a swim and an exercise bike workout (though not much is tracked there).  My big compromise to stretch battery life is I use a stock Garmin watch face and I do not display any data on the watch face that updates frequently like HR or steps.  Also, I leave Bluetooth off, so no notifications.  I track HR, steps, sleep. I use Garmin Coach with my runs.  No PulseOx, no music, music source set to Phone when not in use.  I feel like I have an alien watch based on all of the comments on this board, but it is a Vivoactive 4.

How much time of GPS tracking activities? When I switch off bluetooth at night I get like 0.2-0.3%/h so it is a huge difference than being connected all the time and having frequent notifications (0.5-0.6%/h).

4 hours 15 minutes of GPS so far on this charge cycle.

Taking 0.3%/h when bluetooth is off in my device that gives 40% after 5 days 15h - that gives 11% of GPS tracking in addition, which is about 2.5-3h of workout in best case (on my device). I wonder if 3rd party WF can make that difference, e.g. 0.2%/h*5d15h = 27% and that would leave 24% for GPS workout = ~5h.

So I have done a lot of battery testing with this watch.  Normal day, no GPS, the watch drains about 5%.  GPS costs about 5% per hour, sometimes less (regular GPS, not Galileo or Glonass).  So 5% baseline over 5.5 days is 27.5%, plus another 22%-ish for the 4.25 hours of GPS and that's about 49.5%.  The swim didn't seem to drain the battery much, maybe a couple %, and the bike was an exercise bike, so I basically only recorded time and heart rate for that.  So 49% left is about on target (now at 48%).

How I got to 5% per day (because originally I was only getting 4-5 days per charge):  Charged the watch to 100% and then for another hour.  Switched to Garmin's pre-loaded blue swirl watch face.  Edited it to display only time (hours and minutes only, no seconds bar circling around the outside), date and battery%.  Set music source to "Phone" in settings and then turned off Bluetooth.  (I include switching the music source to "Phone" only because it is something I did just before I got the noticeable improvement in battery performance, but it probably doesn't do anything).  Now, go 24 hrs without using GPS or music or PulseOx and see what the battery drain is.  For me it is about 5%. (on a VA4)  If I use a third party watch face and display a lot of data including HR, it can be 13-14%.  I don't use move alerts, auto activity start, or wrist movement activation, but I wouldn't think they would affect battery life that much.  I do track HR, steps and sleep.

Hello,

Since 4.0 update, my watch is not blinking when charging. It's OK

BUT, now i have to wait more than half an hour for the satellite signal !!!

Garmin Express says that my watch is up to date, so, what can i do ?

On the watch (vivoactive 4S), Sofware version 4.0, GPS Version 2.70

You are lucky, I have basically same settings as you, chargered Sunday morning, then went for a 2 hour run with GPS + galileo. This cost me 20% of battery. So I was around 75% at 3 o'clock yesterday. Today when I came from work at 5:30pm I was at 18% so I had to charge after less than two days. 

Usage during that time: 2 hour GPS run, one morning alarm, couple of read and answered notifications, minimum brightness (no gesture, only when I touch the screen), third party watch face (very simple one with one minute update, I tried basic from garmin before and it made no difference), one sleep (no oxygen measurement) 

One thing I want to try is different charger but I don't believe this is the issue 

Garmin told me NOT to use an Apple (iPhone) charger.   The "smarts" in it is incompatible with the device.   There seems to be 2 charging modes.  The fastest is to charge from a computer USB (big XX%, tie, eject button, green circle around the outside).    Budget charger just give the percentage at the top of the screen.  FYI in case this helps someone in selecting a charger.

sounds interesting. I dont have iPhone charger but I admit charging can be the issue because it took suprisingly long to full charge this little thing - at least one hour from 20% to 100%. My smartphone is charging faster...

I will give it a try next time, which will be probably tommorow - I am on 2.1% per hour since yesterday evening