This discussion has been locked.

You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

Battery drain issues with 955

Hi, I have noticed that my forerunner 955 has the battery drained overnight despite going to sleep with 70-80% battery power. This doesn't happen frequently, however it's annoying because I start the day with 5% battery. This never happened on my old Forerunner 255. Anyone is facing sudden drops in battery power?

0 4128035 7 months ago

Same problem here. From 100% to 70% in less than 24 hours! Noticed this in the last days/weeks, I don't know if it is directly connected with the new 21.20 software. Pretty bad!
Also noticed that watch constantly wanted to make an upgrade although it was already on the latest version until I turned Auto Upgrade off.

0 parentoft 6 months ago

Easy fix.. Power off the watch for a minute or so before turning it on again.

If the battery depleats to fast, then try a stock watchface and se if it not stops.

0 linsguilherme 6 months ago

There are long discussions about this issue here in the forum.

Some users find solutions in the suggested steps discussed, while others find out that their watches have possible hardware problems and have contacted their local Garmin support to solve the problem.

0 parentoft 6 months ago in reply to linsguilherme

Earlier Garmin had many FW versions and much of the code was not shared across devices (development lines) like in "modern" development.

Now Garmin is doing development where core FW is the same - and now the development cycle and release is the same. So if some functionality does not work on a 955, then it does not work on 245, 255, and 965 either, meaning that if a user can see the exact same issue in other forums then the error is mostly related to FW development and not a hardware issue.

Actually in more than 99% of all reported cases are not HW related but software.

1) FW updates where device is not powered off, and then on, after being updated.
2) Non-Garmin watchfaces uses old CIQ versions. Developer needs to update new version of watchface so battery does not deplete fast.
3) Firmware with bugs - for example:. watch does not disconnect bluetooth devices after an activity saved. (power off/on) fixed that for a while. This have been discussed intensely in the forum where people believed that if they turned the watch into airplane-mode then all external devices would automatically be turned off (to save battery). But that was not true.
4) Faulty FW updates. Sometimes a firmware update goes wrong. Meaning that the watch gets the newest FW but GPS says 0.0.0, BT 0.0.0. = parts of the firmware did not get installed.

In case no. 4 garmin replaces the watch because downgrading FW has not been possible, or a reinstall of FW with the missing parts is also not impossible. It is very difficult for support to fix these issues on phone - so a product replacement is faster, cheaper and the customer is "happy".

Also remember, many devices have been sold to customers (Garmin's fiscal report said that they have sold more than 284 million devices in total, more than 16 million devices in 2023 alone - Numbers for 2024 is not yet known). Naturally, there will be a number of faulty devices.