Forerunner 945 battery issue

6123378 said:

Battery Level app is showing mi 93% after 7 hours, which gives 0.693/hour and estimates 5,6 remaining days left 
Battery Monito app is shwoing me 93% after 7 hours but it calculates slightly different - -6,9% / 7,5 hours = -0,9%/hr and estimates 4,2 days left. 

I updated to 6.20 last evening and immediately restarted my watch.  I left it on the charger overnight.  I took it off charge 3 1/2 hrs ago.  I'm connected to Bluetooth and received 1 email since and my watch is still displaying 100% charge.  

6123378 said:

I was using default garmin facewatch (and was bit surprised to notice that it is showing seconds - many users suggestes that face watches showing seconds are draining app).

This is an issue with ciq watch faces and not the default watch faces.

6123378 said:

I also found that altimeter was set to auto calibrate , although I turned it of before hard reset but apparently this is a default option. 

Auto calibrate will only work when in an activity, unless you have it set to calibrate "not during activity".  This is a one time calibration during your sleep window if connected to your phone.  The regular auto calibrate won't be the cause of your battery drain outside an activity.

If I can make a suggestion.  Remove all ciq apps and then install them again one at a time maybe a day apart.  It's a real pain to do so if you use a lot, but you'll usually be able to find the culprit of your battery drain.  I'm not familiar with your battery app, but they too can cause a drain issue.  I was using one in the past that worked great (no need to mention the app/dev) that caused a massive drain after a FW update.  It was eventual fixed, but sometimes a FW update doesn't play well with ciq apps that were working perfectly in the past.  Best of luck.

Thank youwho knows I didn't know that altimeter syncs only ones per day. I found some users posting this as a reason for battery drain on this forum. 

Anyway I disabled not during activity. I also removed all apps, widgets and data fields except for these 2 batteries widget and I will wait another 10-15 hours to check if there is any difference. If not - I am also gonna remove battery widgets as a last resort. 

I think you should provide the app/widget name to others - if this is a root cause this may help many save lot of nerves and frustration...

6123378 said:

I think you should provide the app/widget name to others - if this is a root cause this may help many save lot of nerves and frustration..

The battery widget I was using worked fine for years and has a very high rating.  This was an issue awhile back with an earlier FW update and has since been corrected.  I see no need to name the widget because of bad publicity.  My point was even the best of ciq apps can have issues and until addressed the developer may not be aware.  If you're able to isolate your issue to a certain ciq app, it's best to contact the developer directly as I did and not mention them on the forum.  If it's not resolved you can always post a review in the IQ Store for others to read.

I always keep my battery 50% or greater and found charging for about 30 minutes for most mornings while getting ready for the day keeps it full. However, since the update to firmware 6.20 I have had two instances where it died. The first was the morning after it had updated the firmware, I chalked that up to battery drain associated with the firmware update but then just now it died and I hadn't done anything but sit at my desk since it charged this morning. Something is wrong and I suspect the firmware update. The only other change I have made is to change the altimeter calibration setting to not automatically calibrate during an activity to try and fix a significant elevation drift I have seen on runs (the elevation at end of run is always higher than beginning of run with start and end at same place).

I wish I could solve the battery issue as well, but mine has been this way since before the FW update.  I've tried non-CIQ watch faces, no seconds, no Spo2, etc and I still consistently get almost 1% per hour of drain while only using GPS on average 1 hour per day.  It's very frustrating, I'll go periods with drain at .2% or less, but then it will spike for long periods at 2.5%+ to up the average.  No idea what it's doing to cause those spikes.

(Note I did one field test where I used the watch to near exhaustion and got about 19 hours of GPS-only life, no phone connection, sensors via ANT+ only)

I've noticed the same and also tried to get to the bottom of battery consumption. Interestingly, I removed the battery monitoring widget as suggested earlier in the thread and noticed an improvement. I'm averaging around 0.5% p/h on smart phone mode, with a decent 3rd party watch face, Sp02 during sleep, backlight 20% with gesture and Auto Calb Alt. I do tend to get quite a few notifications throughout the day which prob doesn't help.

I'm pretty happy with this balance of features and consumption. I reckon I could get down to 0.3-0.4% p/h if I turned off the backlight with gesture, SP02 at night, reduced notifications and changed the watch face to one with out live data (e.g HR).

B1nny said:

I've noticed the same and also tried to get to the bottom of battery consumption. Interestingly, I removed the battery monitoring widget as suggested earlier in the thread and noticed an improvement. I'm averaging around 0.5% p/h on smart phone mode, with a decent 3rd party watch face, Sp02 during sleep, backlight 20% with gesture and Auto Calb Alt. I do tend to get quite a few notifications throughout the day which prob doesn't help.

Thanks for the info.  you're doing better than me and you're actually using SpO2 which is supposed to be a battery hog.

I disabled WiFi altogether on mine, thinking that maybe it was searching for Wifi networks (even though it's not supposed to unless prompted), didn't have any effect.  I really don't know what else I can do.  I never go more than 4 days without having to recharge.

Basically all I have done is a master reset back to factory settings then installed a simple watch face every time I recharge I do a hard reset after fully charged and battery is doing fine now not ideal but I find If I don’t do the hard reset after fully charge the battery drains fast thinking this is a garmin software issue.  

I'm happy with battery life now. About 0.4-0.5% per hour.

The watch is 8 months old.

Watch face = no frills with live HR but no seconds.

Mine is APAC version so FW = 5.6. Now I'm liking slow update but a stable release after hearing issues during new update. I have never done any factory reset. And seldom a reboot. Ideally a good watch or smart gadget doesn't need frequent resetting and rebooting.

Spo2 = sleep

Wifi = off

BT = always on

Alt auto cal outside of activity = off (last noticeable setting changed for battery improvement)

Notifications = Limited to certain messaging and calls

Mines about same apart for notifications never had them on about same age as yours aswell