firmware 12.50 battery drain issues

af0002 - Thanks for your attempts to help but I feel your post probably sounds somewhat patronising to a lot of people.

I know my way round Garmin devices having owned a Geko, Edge 305, Edge 500, Edge 510, Edge 520, Edge 705, Forerunner 305, Forerunner 405, Forerunner 235, Vivoactive, Vivosmart HR... plus various sensors and additional mounts etc. It's frightening when I add up how much of my hard earned cash I have invested in them over the years.

All of the devices have showed signs of flakiness that were inconvenient at best, downright annoying at worst but I could live with these issues as generally they were still better than anything else out there. Most times the problems were fixed in a subsequent software release.

The latest issue with the Edge 520 which has only occurred since the 12.5 upgrade is serious as it effectively cripples the device and makes it unusable for its intended purpose.

In my experience it is NOT related in any way to backlight usage as I always keep the backlight level to 0%. I have always found the screen is fine without any backlight.

I have done the factory reset, ridden without paired sensors,no bluetooth, tried previous firmwares etc. but nothing has changed. I am still seeing excessive battery drain that gives me around 4 hours of ride time at maximum.

The fact is that I shouldn't have to do all this troubleshooting myself. It should work as advertised with all the sensors etc connected. It's frustrating when the finger of blame is pointed back at me, as a user, by other forum users.

I just want it to work as it did on the day before the 12.5 firmware release. Between that day and the next, nothing changed apart from the firmware upgrade.

I used Zwift through winter so my Edge 520 has not been switched on for about 5 month. I read this topic thoroughly so I was aware of issue and as soon as Edge 520 offered me update after start up I declined that. I keep version 12.20 and gps version is 3.1. I did 2 rides with backlight off, connected heart rate monitor, speed and cadence senor and Varia Radar and Remote. I was riding on quiet roads, therefore there were not many radar alerts. Temperature was 8degrees C on both rides. I put new batteries in all sensors apart from Heart rate monitor. Edge went from 100% to 5 % in 4 hours. Even when i consider lower temperature, battery was drained very quickly. All blames go on firmware 12.5, but this indicates that problem occured earlier, did not it?

Whether it started in 12.2, 12,3, 12.4, or 12.5 the problem seems pretty real to most of the people in this thread, Garmin clearly makes changes in various releases and does not mention them in the fairly useless release notes. I am on 12.1 and not moving, I have a backup 9.1 to go back to if problems did show. I do a lot of 12 hour + rides (200kms) , sometimes 16+ hour rides (300) and have never run out of battery, even when using a bit (10%) of stays on backlight when riding into the night for maybe 5-6 hours. have also done all night rides using 10% stay on backlight and had 30% battery left at the end. So if it works OK in 12.1 Garmin should be able to identify the problem and reverse / correct it.It is a pity that the apparently faulty GPS firmware update can't be reversed by downgrading. Most users don't do long enough rides to notice even an accelerated drain and probably recharge between rides. The issue only becomes apparent when hey do extended rides and run out of battery.

If someone has reverted the firmware, reset the device, added no sensors, and the problem still occurs, how can the issue be anything other than a hardware issue with the battery? People of course don't want to believe that, because that will mean they have to pay Garmin over $100 to replace the device with a refurbed one.

I suspect there are multiple factors at play here that could be contributing to the issue. I don't work for Gamin, but I am a systems engineer and have been in the IT field for 20+ years. Firstly, there could absolutely be a difference in Edge 520 devices that were manufactured over time. My 2 year old device could have a different battery manufacturer, microprocessor or EPROM chip vendor from a newly built Edge 520. The released 12.5 firmware may have a problem with "SOME" of the devices because of a condition related to specific hardware vendors within the device. Secondly, firmware is generally written to be moved forward, not backwards. This is due to the nature of ROM chips. There is no guarantee that a firmware rollback will remove all of the changes of the later and previously loaded firmware. For example, if you have version 9.1 loaded and you update to 12.5, what is being written is more than just an all inclusive instruction set. Some features are written to locations on the ROM that were previously empty. If you then re-flash your device back to 9.1, there is a likelihood that the newest areas of ROM that were written to will still have executable functions in them. It is for this reason that most vendors prohibit downgrading firmware because it could have unexpected results.

All of that being said, there is enough evidence in this thread to suggest that at a minimum, a subset of Edge 520 devices are experiencing critical battery failure/drain after upgrading to the 12.5 firmware. Until this is resolved, I will just record with my Fenix, and if I need navigation, I will be printing a cue sheet. Getting lost on a ride 60 miles from home is a bad idea.

I mostly ride w/o following course and get at least ok battery runtimes since 12.50/12.53 of about 8hrs or so (speed/cadence/hr/bt+mobile connected / GPS on / backlight auto-off 30s / data tracking interval smart).

Today, I rode w/ following a course. After about 2:10h, battery was at 53%. I started with 100%. I bought the Edge 520 on Sep/8/16. Backlight is auto-off after 30s (when on, on 50%), GPS only, followed a course for ~2hrs, speed+cadence sensor on, HR sensor on, BT on and mobile connected, data tracking interval set to “smart”. In the past – that means before firmware 12.50/12.53, I would do rides following courses of about 8hrs and even longer. When doing indoor cycling, battery life is good – indoors I disable GPS, backlight auto-off 30s / 50%, no course, power and cadence sensor on, HR sensor on, BT on and mobile connected, data tracking interval set to smart. Indoors I’m likely to get about 13-15hrs. The battery life since 12.50 renders the device useless for tours for me.

I sent the fit files to [email][email protected][/email] as requested. Hopefully this problem will be solved soon...

I have same setting as always, so backlight cannot be a issue. I think that this counts for the majority of users, that firmware 12.5 (or 12.2) did not lead people to suddenly switch the backlight on .... This shows that Garmin doesnt have a clue. We have a plenty of Garmin devices home (Vector, Edge 520,1000,Radar, Remote, Dakota) and my wife was considering to replace her 1000 for new 1030. Now, I am not sure if it is the best choice

i think what shawn-garmin is asking is does the backlight come on unexpectantly when you have set it to zero. for instance while out riding does the backlight come on even if it is set to zero and shows zero. it can be hard to see if the light is on outside when riding for me when set to 40%(my normal setting if i use it) i will certainly check this when out riding on sunday.

When starting to tackle any issue, it is important to rule out the basics.
Now we know Garmin has to decided to take a serious look on the matter, and has a firm belief that the longer days in the northern hemisphere will solve the problem.
It takes courage to tell their costumers that they collectively decided to use their devices the wrong way, thank you for that.