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Forerunner 55 Battery Drain Issue

PhysicsRunner
over 2 years ago

I've had two instances where a fully charged Forerunner 55 showed excessive battery drain. I fully charged the device in the evening, wore it overnight, and the battery was down by 30-40% the following day. This was with no tracked activities. I've had previous Forerunner series watches that automatically went into activity mode when removed from the charger. I suspect something like that is happening here but unseen in the background. In other words, I suspect that the GPS hardware is getting turned on, causing the unexpected battery drain. I seem to be able to avoid the problem by pressing the Start/Stop button, followed by the Back button after removing the watch from the charger. Has anyone else seen this or similar behavior? Any other ideas about the issue or a solution? Thanks.

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    Hey, I came here to create a new thread about this exact issue. Slight smile

    For me battery drain seems to be ok during the day but it drops about 15-30% during the night. Only variables that I have thought about which are not present during the day are 1) I set alarm clock on the watches 2) watches are disconnected from phone during the night (maybe BT issue?)

    Software version is 2.09 

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    My battery too seems to be draining quickly during the day. I charges it last night and today it dropped quickly down to 40-something percent. I can't seem to figure out what's draining it. I never had this issue with the 35...

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    I just want to add my voice to this issue. I am already on my second Forerunner 55 (the retailer replaced the first one within a week) and both devices need/ed to be charged every day or two. I have updated the software to 2.09 (on both devices). I also keep the bluetooth off unless I am syncing with my phone. None of this has helped. I even did a factory reset on the first one and this didn't help. By keeping the bluetooth off I am getting about 2 days instead of 1. But I have not gotten anything better than 2 days battery life. I am also running indoors with the treadmill function, so I am not using GPS at all. Like 6354357 it seems to drop the most after sleep/after the night.

    Any other suggestions? 

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to 6354357

    Last night I have tested turning off the Bluetooth before sleeping and it helped considerably, it dropped only 3%.

    The 15-30% which happens with BT turned on still seems to me as a bug.

    I am actually not seeing any large drains during the day as users 1829264 and 9876434.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to 6354357

    With bluetooth off I still had a drop off to 40% after sleeping AGAIN, but I managed just over 2 days with the BT off (80-85% for almost 2 days). Sometimes I am having big drop offs during the day but mostly at night.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to 9876434

    Just to be sure, are you turning off BT on your phone or turning it off on the watches by the "Phone: Off" shortcut?

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to 6354357

    Haha, for sure, it is definitely BT off on the device via the "Phone:off" shortcut. Having the BT off is now doing nothing for me, I have to charge it every day or two still. Had to charge it again this morning 24 hours after the last charge. I am charging it so often I haven't even bothered to sync with my phone since the middle of the weekend, I just let it sync with my computer while charging. The BT has been off for over 4 days (not even on for 2 minutes to sync) and it is not helping at all to have it off.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to 9876434

    Today I actually observed it too. For the past few days I have been turning off BT and it dropped about ~3% during the night, today I turned it off and it dropped by 40%...  I will maybe try installing beta 3.02 too see if it helps.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to 6354357

    I just wanted to update this saying that I installed 3.03 and it has made no difference at all to battery life. I still keep the bluetooth off and am running inside with GPS off and can still only achieve between 18 and 50 hours of battery life.

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    This is just a quick follow-up to my original post. While the unexpected battery drain is an issue, I must add that the battery life is outstanding other than when this happens. Since my original post, I had one week where I went almost a full week between charges, with multiple activities tracked. Then of course the next week wasn't so good as the drain issue happened again. I have made a recent change and I'm curious about others experience with this. It appears that the default setting for Move IQ is enabled (on). I turned this off and I think it has helped. Anyone else looked at this feature and whether or not it makes a difference in battery life?