I know they need to fix it but the battery drain in watch mode is so small compared to the drain in active mode than the gain you get is minimal by turning the watch off. Just keep it on IMHO
I'm not sure where they would fix that. Unlikely to be in the firmware as that's not even booted or in operation.
Maybe there is a bios equivalent which can be updated, or maybe somehow it's a hardware issue.
It's strange, but not the end of the world for most people as drain is very minimal with most stuff turned off.
This is a microcontroller system. When the watch is 'off' I bet it isn't actually. The display is off and the microcontroller will probably be in a very low-leakage stop mode so the boot time is reduced. They probably have something drawing current that shouldn't. It's probably not obvious and I guess it will be low priority as they is an easy fix which is just to keep the watch on which I reckon 99% of the people do.
When the watch is off, it will no doubt be in some ultra low power mode waiting for a button press to interrupt this state and boot it up. Depending on the configuration of it and the auxiliary hardware it may or may not be fixable via a software update. It may need a band aid fix if whatever is drawing the power is not directly controllable while is this "off" state.
The mentality of turning electronics devices off when not in use is old and no longer makes sense in most cases. You will not prolong the usable life of the battery and if anything, if you regularly charge the battery full and then turn it off for an extended time, you are probably doing the battery more harm than good. Lithium batteries like to never be fully charged or discharged and get top ups more regularly to stay between say 20% and 80%.
I agree it's bad design for the watch to have this discharge issue but the workaround is not that painful. Just turn off activity tracking/HR/Bluetooth etc when not in use and I'll bet it'd last for weeks and weeks before it'll need to be recharged. The watch will be old technology by the time the battery has aged significantly.
Heart Rate widget remains active until dismissed manually by the user
One thing I have noticed, after pressing the Down button from the watch face earlier to check on my supposed RHR (which is showing as 39, due to a single outlier dipping way below the 50–60 range my HR was for the past four hours) a couple of hours ago, and neglecting to dismiss the widget, is that it is still showing when I glanced at it just now.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, and now the user effectively having a choice to keep the widget running for a long time is a good thing. However, I can also imagine someone getting an unwelcome surprise at the elevated battery power consumption, if they unknowingly bump the Down button while asleep, and only discover the widget is still running several hours later.
One thing I have noticed, after pressing the Down button from the watch face earlier to check on my supposed RHR (which is showing as 39, due to a single outlier dipping way below the 50–60 range my HR was for the past four hours) a couple of hours ago, and neglecting to dismiss the widget, is that it is still showing when I glanced at it just now.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, and now the user effectively having a choice to keep the widget running for a long time is a good thing. However, I can also imagine someone getting an unwelcome surprise at the elevated battery power consumption, if they unknowingly bump the Down button while asleep, and only discover the widget is still running several hours later.
I have noticed that exact same thing - HR widget being displayed for long periods - I noticed it before the recent updates.
I could not identify the cause or any type of pattern... it came and went for a few days, and then the feature was gone.
I got this watch a couple of days back and was wary of all the complaints including Apple Health integration, 71-72 bpm bug and 66 bpm bug - good to see that all of them seem to be getting attention. Much pleased that there seems to be good sizeable updates to the firmware and app!
This is great, would have never known until I read this! I wish the work outs would show now! ugh
Mine was showing RHR of 35 for the first little while after I installed the update, but it latched onto that number within minutes of being on my wrist... most likely just a faulty reading during initialization, because overnight it corrected itself up to 45, which is what my RHR has been measured as in hospital.
Same here, I did see this morning RHR 35, weird.. should be 38/40. Beside that not much time for testing. We'll see on the run this weekend and post back.
Have I missed this the whole time, or is the timeline feature on the GC Mobile snapshot page new? Now I can see if my hr spikes correspond to my activity or if they're just random spikes. It's nice to be able to scrub through the hr and see how many minutes my hr was at any given time. I have experienced some crazy spikes but the sampling rate cuts down on the hour long plateaus. And, the battery life? How did garmin keep the battery life while dramatically increasing sampling rate? Good work!
