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High-battery drain? Instability? Uninstall third-party software. Also: wear your watch correctly.

Otto-Destruct
over 5 years ago

There seem to be a lot of reports of high battery drain and instability lately.

The FIRST thing Garmin support is going to ask you: "Do you have third-party apps installed?" This means watch-faces, widgets, datafields, whatever. REMOVE THEM.

Respect to the diligent devs like Hiking Jim (Hike2 app) and TheCodeDude (Barcode Wallet app) but no third-party app is going to have the same level of testing as stock Garmin software - it just can't. Firmware updates are more likely to break third-party software so even if something is working fine "for now," it may not tomorrow.

Disclosure: I do use "Barcode Wallet" and have had no issues with it. (it's "static", unlike a watch-face). 

______________________________

UN-related to battery drain: wear your watch correctly. I see a lot of photos of people wearing them right at their wrist. It's supposed to be about two-inches up your arm, well away from the bony protrusion in your wrist, per this entry in the manual: https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/forerunner945/EN-US/GUID-F2E7E0A9-FB44-4297-BF4D-D0C31C400C45.html

Wearing your watch too close to your wrist will screw up HR and HRV readings which in turn bork the metrics for all sorts of things like Stress, and Body Battery which is driven by HRV stress. Further, it may also mess with sleep tracking as the watch measures wrist-actography.

If you're wearing a chest-strap HRM, watch position during an activity isn't as important as optical-HR will be disabled. (you can even stuff your watch in a pocket - ultra-runners will do this, and plug their watch into a USB powerbank to charge)

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to badbri

    Except that it might not have been updated to work with the newly installed Garmin software you’ve just installed. 

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    So you are saying more or less that ConnectIQ is a failure that causes instability and should be best removed from further firmware releases?

  • +1 over 5 years ago

    3rd party apps (Hike2 for example) use zero battery unless they are running.

    When you see high battery drain, the first thing to try is a reboot (sometimes called a hard reset), where you press the light button until the watch turns itself off, then charge to 100%

    As someone that's got a ton of CIQ apps installed, I consistently see less than 1%/hr drain (usually in the .5% range) when just wearing the watch with a (ciq) watchface

  • +1 over 5 years ago in reply to runningfan97

    That’s not it at all. While there are some good people developing for CIQ there are also amateurs ‘playing’ around. What is being said is that there are no guarantees for the quality, or that what you have on your watch has been updated to the most recent software that you’ve downloaded.

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to Dr Phil

    Well, even after a factory reset, my watch has about 50 to 60% higher battery drain than pre 3.90 Firmware... So I guess it DOES have something to do with it and not with any 3rd party CIQ addition.

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to Scorp1981

    I have no CIQ apps (other than 2 Garmin widgets) and after several years of using Garmin watches, I'm having a high battery drain for the first time. I did the hard reset after the update and charging my watch to 100%.  I'm nursing an injury and with no activities and I'm down to 63% in about 36 hours. 

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    Oh I dunno, I think there is something to the new FW being more "costly" on battery.  I was pleased with FW 3.3 because I finally started getting 9+ days out of a charge at about .4% per hour rate average.  Now so far with 3.9 I am up to .7%+ per hour and only a projected 5-6 days of use.  

    Nothing has changed with regard to any of the third-party stuff I use.

  • +1 over 5 years ago in reply to badbri
    badbri said:
    Nothing has changed with regard to any of the third-party stuff I use.

    And that’s the point. If the CIQ stuff has not been updated IT might be affected by the software update. Not all developers are proactive.

    That said, since others are reporting an increase in battery consumption on watches that are free of CIQ additions, it is very possible there is a problem caused by the update. Sadly it looks like we’re just going to have to deal with it until after the holidays.