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Forerunner 55 Battery Drain Issue

PhysicsRunner
over 3 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 3 years ago in reply to Vladimir

    I can't speak for others but with the first 55 I had, Garmin made me do a factory reset and a soft reset and neither helped the battery drain problem at all. This is obviously not the same thing as PhysicsRunner, but it surely would have removed the information in those folders. Right now I get by with the computer sync or the restart as advised by luisxgomes from the other thread and now I get decent battery life. However my issue and luis' issue were confined to indoor activities.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to 9876434

    And if you run on the street, there are no such problems? Or it is not known.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Vladimir

    I am having problems with gps activities. Garmin-brazil is aware about the problem. 

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Vladimir

    I am specifically running indoors. Luis was also having the worst of it with indoor swims (if I remember correctly). I haven't tried it outside and I am not going to do so. He and I were the only ones to have the exact same problem consistently. I had the battery drain every single day I logged a run. Others' battery drain has been more inconsistent. I suspect at least one of the issues is with indoor activities turning on the GPS. There could be other issues. A lot of people are having a lot of different issues with the battery. Read the other thread too https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/running-multisport/f/forerunner-55-series/269405/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-or-bluetooth 

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to 6943667

    Garmin South Africa know about it too. Garmin can see these threads, they know there is a battery issue and they just haven't figured out how to fix it yet...I hope, otherwise they just don't care.

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    From Barcelona having the same problem. I have done the phisicsrunning solution. We will see what happens

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    Hi, garmin sent me an email saying that they have no solution for the problem. The only work around is reboot the watch after some activity

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to 6943667

    I did the procedure and for the moment it works...

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to PhysicsRunner

    It's been a while since I last checked in so here's a quick update. Since arranging my favorite activities as described above, I have been doing well on battery life. I'm getting about a week between charges. My favorite activities are set up on the watch as Indoor Track, Run, and Pool Swim in that order. This puts a non-GPS activity at the top of the list. My typical week consists of 3-5 hours of outdoor GPS tracked runs, 2 hours of indoor tracked runs and 1 hour of tracked lap pool swimming. I wear the watch 24x7 and track sleep, leave bluetooth on and receive notifications from my phone except during do not disturb hours. My activities generally sync right away via bluetooth and my phone so I rarely connect the watch to a computer. Also, there has been a software update to version 4.02 but given the ongoing complaints I doubt that was what fixed things for me. As always, your mileage may vary but so far this is working well for me.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to PhysicsRunner

    I have reordered my favourite activities and I am going to see if that does anything.
    But I was stressed a few days ago and the F55 prompted me to do a breathing activity which I did, for the first time ever. I finished the 5 minute breathing activity, didn't think more about it and was then shocked to see a few hours later, over 20% battery drop. I quickly synced to the computer and have not had another problem since then. For some of us this is happening after ANY activity. (As in a 5 minute breathing exercise that it prompted me to do - ie. I didn't choose it from my activity list...) We have to sync/reboot after EVERY activity to get decent battery life. (By the way I get weeks of battery life running 6 days a week indoors, at least an hour at a time, but I only get this battery life if I do an immediate sync, otherwise it is between 18 and 40 hours battery life.)