Possible cause of increased watch battery consumption.

One to test tonight...

i've anecdotally thought this has happened to me before...playing with the GC app on my iPhone led to a significant battery drop (a few percent in a few hours)...it was typically on the screen you note or on a setting screen.

You are right. Today I changed a few settings in my 955 via the GC interface. Now, two or three hours later, the FR955 battery has lost 20%, normal would be 2%.

i've never had a 20% drop (wow!), but what i've seen is usually 3-4% in a couple of hours while my typical burn rate with a very data rich watch face is typically 6-7%/day.

usually it ultimately settles out and goes back to normal, but these sudden drops are disquieting and often tied to the GC app...although i have had it drop in other instances where i don't think it's GC related.

Before going to sleep I've try to start a sync and then put smartphone in airplane mode. No bug this time...

Hi, I just want to add my 2 cents on this topic...to see if you are using what I got written back. So battery drain after activities and changes in GC. I was asked to send a watch for a repair to Garmin. Got back a new one I guess, with all "clicky" buttons this time.

I also got 2 notices regarding the problems - 1. regarding altimeter - due to weather changes, indoors/outdoors the watch should be calibrated before EVERY activity when altitude matters.

The 2. - related to battery drain - translated - "There are potentially problem with Android MIUI devices (Huawei, Xiaomi, Honor, etc.) due to a bluetooth changes and power settings where the phone closes the applications running in the background."

I was wondering any of you with problems use some of this phones, not sure about Huawei. Xiaomi in my case, but I don't use it connected to the phone/app constantly, only during the sync after the activity.

I sync, turn off the Bluetooth on the phone, turn off sync on the watch and phone connection and put it in airplane mode. I wrote them that, but they provided the notice above.

I got a drain, 5% in about 2 hours when I forgot to turn off sensor search...during that time the watch was in no phone mode, no wifi, no sync and in airplane mode.

I just reconnected (for the first time on the new watch) my cadence sensor yesterday, via Ant+ and BT, I think.Turned everything off except that cadence sensor. When I entered in Sensors & Acc. - it was searching for it and draining the battery. Stupid. If I turn phone connection off and plane mode on the watch it should cut all the communication. There was another post about that earlier. After that I turned that sensor off in settings and turned off and back on the watch - long press light button.

Now when I think about it...it was maybe searching for a BT HRM after the activity...but the drain wasn't happening after every activity (weird) and I wear HRM during almost all of my activities (mostly Run). I don't turn off BT sensor/HRM in the settings on the watch afterwards. I will see how it behaves now...if I do the same things as I used to. On some earlier version of the firmware, definitely it wasn't draining the battery.

Do, those of you who use HRM (ie. Polar Bluetooth H7, H9 or H10), have drain problems after the activity?

Better question - do you turn off HRM BT in Sensors & Accessories on the watch after every activity...and is it necessary (it shouldn't be). On Polar, when you exit Airplane mode it searches for BT sensor...but it doesn't when you are outside of/ended the activity.

I will check later if the watch still searches for HRM after the activity ended under Sensors & Accessories.

EDIT: Battery drain definitely happens after HRM not turned off, but airplane mode turned ON. THAT IS SO STUPID AND ANNOYING. Garmin, please fix this. 

Also when you are in an airplane mode, drain happens, but you cannot choose (and turn off) any sensor because it says Airplane mode enabled:)

I turned the HRM off in the settings on the watch and will see if it continues to drain without the watch restart.

EDIT 2: Yes, it keeps draining if HRM turned off and if watch not restarted. Bummer.

Just following on from the phone brand mattering. I have only used the watch with Google Pixels (3a originally, and currently 6a) and haven't seen the extreme battery drain others have.

Some manufacturers are extremely aggressive with killing background services (eg. Garmin Connect sync) and that might cut things off half way through an operation, leaving the watch in a limbo state.

It might be worthwhile searching out the battery optimization settings for the phone and turning that feature off for the Garmin Connect app.

I would bet it's not the phone. Today I had BT off on my phone, except for the sync in the morning. Battery behavior OK.

Then I wanted to pair one of my earphones at about noon - turned airplane mode off, went to Music - Earphones...and saw them there already. Forgot I already added them on the first day.

I didn't choose to search for earphones nor did I open the earphones case. Once again BT on the phone is OFF. Exited from earphones (all are off on the watch), turned back on airplane mode on the watch...and noticed how the % of battery drops rapidly...couple (5-6%) of percent in about an hour or two. Then turned the watch off and on...and after that it is OK.

So freakin' frustrating. I hope they fix it in the next firmware, but somehow (from the experience till now) I doubt it. This is the same behavior as on the previous watch.

Even if is caused because of the power settings of the smartphone I would expect that Garmin is capable of develop a simple timeout for this kind of wireless communications...