I was just curious as to what could be expected as to the life of the FR 235 battery. Not how long it can go between charges, but the service life of the battery before it no longer holds a charge long enough to be useful. And when it gets to that point can it be replaced?
I was just curious as to what could be expected as to the life of the FR 235 battery. Not how long it can go between charges, but the service life of the battery before it no longer holds a charge long enough to be useful. And when it gets to that point can it be replaced?
I can't give you a quoted figure as Garmin says nothing about this but I can give you my thoughts on what I would expect. I would imagine Garmin would have sourced a quality battery for this watch so quality shouldn't be an issue.
Lithium battery life in general is usually proportional to the number of complete charge cycles. I don't remember the exact figure but you would expect a 20% decrease in storage capacity after 100 charge cycles or so (i.e. 1 charge cycle = putting in and sucking out a full 100% of the charge - not necessarily in one go). If you keep it charged at 100% (i.e. charge it back to 100% every 10mins) too often that would degrade the life of the battery. Similarly, if you keep it flat for too many extended periods of time, that too would degrade the life of the battery. Because the watch is usually attached to your body, then it is kept at a really good temperature for battery life so over/under temperature effects should be negligible.
With all that said, if you predominately hold it's charge level between 80% - 20% most of the time, I would expect >3-4 years of solid use shouldn't be much of an issue. I don't know if the battery is replaceable by you - Garmin (or 3rd party) may offer a service to do this but I would imagine by the time the battery has suffered significantly to the point of being unusable, the technology would be so old you would have upgraded by then already.
It took nearly three years before my Forerunner 610's battery life was noticeably reduced. Still quite usable, just not like it was. When I talked to Garmin about battery replacement it was a $99 flat fee to exchange for a refurbished 610 with new battery. I ended up using it for another few months before buying a newer fancier watch.
IMHO I don't worry about battery lifetime. If you're like most folks, by the time it's reaching it's service limit you're going to be ready for a new watch anyway. If instead you hang onto a running watch for 5-6 years you'll have the option of swapping for a unit with a fresh battery.
As far as I know, there doesn't exist a current GPS running watch with a user-replaceable battery.
I use garmin fr 235 1,5 year, but on last week I need to charge watches every day. I turn Bluetooth off, but it can't help. Today I charged to 100% and after 2 hours 83%. Maybe battary is broken? How to change battary? Where I can buy it? (Firmware 7.50)
