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6.20 SW Battery Drain

My 10 month old Vivoactive 4 is draining battery like crazy - any pointers or help to fix this?

  • Current software version: 6.20

Issues I've noticed so far

  • Battery draining at around 1% every 5 minutes
  • Crashes every night - have to do a restart every morning to turn the watch on (and seeing around 20% battery left)
  • Crashes while attempting to connect to Wi-Fi, check for updates

What I've tried so far (none of this seem to help)

  • Did a full factory reset by deleting data
  • Did a full recharge - shutdown - wait for 5-10 minutes - power up again
  • Tried to do a update, but each time it crashes after attempting to connect to the Wi-Fi

Need some help with this.

  • same here, watch 50% battery drain / day from just standing at my desk

  • The watch was turned off when I woke up today. When doing a restart, the watch turns off after booting up to the main screen.

    After around 4-5 restarts, it is working now as if nothing happened.

    Really need some help with this.

  • Hi, you should be aware that in the Vivoactive 3, after the upgrade in the software the battery is lasting only a few hours.

    Thousands of owners have already tried all the options ( Factory reset, No watchfaces or any other CIQ apps, discharge and full charge cycles,.... ) and we still have the same problem, battery not lasting more than 10 hours. Therefore it is obviously a problem of the software, since it happens to a lot of watches, not older than 30 months.  Unfortunately, the only solution that Garmin offers is 99€+shipping costs.

    Now the problems is for the VA3, but who knows who is next in this programmed obsolescence.

    We have to ask Garmin to acknowledge the problem, fix it, if possible, updating the software as soon as possible, and if it is not possible, exchange the watches. 

  • Totally agree, this doesn't make sense otherwise. What is the best thing we can do at this point?

    I've sent an email to Customer Support (3 days ago), but haven't received a response yet.

  • Crashes are getting more frequent with no possible explanation

    Below are my observations

    1. Turning off SPO2 sensor (even while sleeping) seems to make things a bit better by reducing the crashes during the sleep time

    New crashes

    1. Seems to crash on weird combinations - receiving notifications from the phone

    2. While navigating through the menus

    To Garmin, if you are seeing this - this needs some attention. Every day I spend with the device I'm losing my trust with the product

  • I’m sorry to hear of the battery drain issues that you’re experiencing.  Let’s start by power cycling (turning off and then back on) your watch.  Next, please sync your watch with Garmin Express to ensure that your watch's firmware is up to date.

    How Do I Install Garmin Express?

    If the battery drain persists and if you have any Connect IQ (CIQ) Content, especially watch faces, you may need to delete that content until the independent developer is able to update their app/watch face to function correctly (without causing a battery drain) with the new firmware version on your watch.  You can use any of the 3 FAQs below to uninstall the CIQ content.

    How to Uninstall Connect IQ App Content Using the Connect IQ App

    How to Uninstall Connect IQ Content Using Garmin Express

    How to Uninstall Connect IQ Content Using the Garmin Connect App

     

    If you would like to submit feedback to the developer of the CIQ content, you can do so by clicking the link below and searching for the download page of the CIQ content.  In the bottom right corner of that page, you will find the option to contact the developer.

    https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/

    If you have completed all of this and are still experiencing a rapid battery drain, please contact your local Garmin support team via Telephone or Live Chat:

    www.support.garmin.com

  • That happened with me too!

  • Here are something that I did to my Vivoactive 4s and helped a bit (around 4-5 days battery life)

    - Backlight to 30% (time out short and gesture to low sensitivity)

    - Vibration low

    - Activity tracking on (but if you really want a long battery life you can turn it off)

    - Connect to my phone only once a week

    - SpO2 while sleeping

    - Always update when new software comes out

    - Delete all third party software and use the stock watch face

    If there is any other way I can improve my battery life then please reply to this message!

  • Hello Kevin,

    Based on your inputs I connected and sync'd the watch with Garmin Express.

    - The battery drain is better now. It's dropping at the rate of around 25% per day, better than how it was before (2-3% every hour) but definitely bad than how it was (when the watch did not have issues - a full battery used to give me 5 - 6 days) 

    - The watch still crashes if I try to do a Pulse OX test or if I enable the Pulse Ox monitoring for the night (I used to do this just for the night, for better battery performance).

    Allow me some more time to fully try out the other steps before I report back on the performance.

    Thanks,

    Reuben