6.10 software update drains battery

I am not saying people are imagining their issues. But it is interesting that the problems only applies to a subset of Vivoactive owners. I have been following the forum for 10+ firmware releases, and there is a very noticeable pattern. The battery drain happens just after rollout of a new release. There was just as much complaining on earlier releases. It seems to me that the issue is related to the installation of new releases, not the content of the firmware itself. Somehow, in some watches, the firmware is not installed correctly. Those who have drain issues now, typically refer to 5.60 as working well. But when 5.60 was released, there was a lot of complains about new battery drain issues, and that the release had to be rolled back.

Some think it is planned obsolescence from Garmin, that the watch should become inferior after some releases to make people buy new watches. My watch seems to indicate that this is not the case, as it has survived quite a few firmwares without battery issues. 

The issue with freezing is another matter. That seems to be 6.10 specific.

same here. gesture feature was/is turned of. Backlight is always on. I need to charge daily now without any tracking.

I think you underestimate how many watch owners there are with no issues. They are not here to complain now. 
Judging by this forum, almost everybody had battery issues with 5.60. But we see now that many report that they didn't have issues back then. Next year, when 6.70 is being released with new battery drain problems, maybe lot of Vivoactive owners will refer back to 6.10 as a very good firmware with no battery issues?

No Probs...

ovekvam said:

Mode: On
Brightness: 10%
Timeout: Medium
Gesture: Off

Mine are the same for a while with the only difference that I have short timeout.

So far it seems my battery drain issue has gone but I'm not really sure what fixed it.

Here is what I've experienced and what I did in case it could be some of help and could bring some clues to those who still suffer from it.

1. I had an unusual drain of battery during the day about 2% and then overnight when my watch used up all 60% of charge and I woke the first time seeing the warning that PulseOX was turned off and then I woke up with turned off watch. During that night I had PulseOX on just like I had it during the previous week and SpO2 feature drains about 10% per night usually.

2. The night before I installed a watchface which I didn't like as it had constant HR field which couldn't be disabled, I also couldn't change it from the watch so I had to remove it from GCM. After this operation my watch fall back to default watchface with Body Battery, Battery status, Hours and minutes. I also bought a year license for Swim+ as tested it that day and liked how it works.

2. After that I've  charged the watch up 75%, tried to sync it back via GCM and Garmin Express(usually I'm not doing that as I'm on Linux and have no easy access to Express). Surprisingly when I connected my watch shown that I'm still running 6.05 but after second sync it showed that I'm on 6.10.
Since my first idea was that it must be due to that mishap with watchface I tried to go to watch and change my watchface from one built-in to another and back.

3. My PulseOX was disabled by the watch but just in case I turned it  off completely forced sync on GCM and turned it back to night mode only before going to bed.

4. That could be important, or not, I've adjusted my sleep hours to be 2AM to 10AM, previously I had something like 11PM to 7 and PulseOX was starting too early.

Also here is screenshot which I've found in my PulseOX the next day when it tried to detect my SpO2 during the whole day instead of just night...

ovekvam said:

The issue with freezing is another matter. That seems to be 6.10 specific.

I'm glad to see, that you at least you admitted that the problem with freezes is a bug and not just a mishap of people installing firmware the "wrong" way, I remember you've been skeptic about it too. So I wonder how many more posts of people should convince you that the battery drain is an issue as well.

In fact, it could be as well caused by the freeze when watch is stuck in backlight on mode or wrong PulseOX mode.

ovekvam said:

I think you underestimate how many watch owners there are with no issues. They are not here to complain now. 

so what about those who have the issue, would you advise them to sit silently instead of reporting the problem so either the pattern of why it happens could emerge or Garmin would try to work on it?

ovekvam said:

Next year, when 6.70 is being released with new battery drain problems, maybe lot of Vivoactive owners will refer back to 6.10 as a very good firmware with no battery issues?

That's a very optimistic prediction, I hope you're right and Garmin would keep issuing updates that long ;)

5393261 said:

I have the same settings as you other than a short timeout & drain is around 2% an hour with 6.10. As with everyone else I've tried all suggestions to fix & nothing works.

hey, 5393261, I wonder if you have PulseOX turned on for nighttime and what are your sleep hours set in profile or have you checked PulseOX graph to see if you have SpO2 logged during the whole day like I had?

It is Garmin that upgrades our firmware, so I blaim their upgrade process, not the watch owners. I definitely think the battery drain is an issue, but I am not convinced that is a 6.10-specific bug. I think the bug was there a long time, and that the upgrade process can trig it. It does not seem like Garmin manages to sort this out, so I think it is a very good idea to compare symptoms and setups to find common factors. If you can pinpoint the bug, it is easier for Garmin to fix it. 

But I think it could be a dead end to focus on what has been changed in 6.10, because I think the same thing could happen in 5.80, 5.60 and older firmwares. There were plenty of reports with very similar footprints.

ovekvam said:

It does not seem like Garmin manages to sort this out, so I think it is a very good idea to compare symptoms and setups to find common factors. If you can pinpoint the bug, it is easier for Garmin to fix it. 

true, and a few people actually tried to start threads comparing their setups but they never were very successful somehow. So I guess it's a Garmin call to contact people and find the pattern.

ovekvam said:

But I think it could be a dead end to focus on what has been changed in 6.10, because I think the same thing could happen in 5.80, 5.60 and older firmwares. There were plenty of reports with very similar footprints.

Indeed, I know what you mean by the similar footprint, as even myself being not so long with VA4 I remember how those posts with high drain emerge. But anyway, I think that amount of people with high drain is rather higher than usual for this firmware, and that Garmin has best tools for solving the issue as they contact those who reported individually and query them about this. They actually did that for me a few times on various issues I had including latest Freeze bug.

So I think that everyone should post that they have the issue and eventually Garmin can ask those who reproted about details of their setup  and figure out what's wrong.