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Battery life worse on firmware 6.3

Former Member
Former Member
I have Garmin Forerunner 230 for 2 months. With firmware 5.40, battery went down about 5% per night with everything turned off except activity tracking.

After updating to 6.30 on Friday, battery went down from 100% to 84% in 5 hours! Then I decided to do factory reset, no watch face or wiget installed and everything turn off including activity tracking, it still consumes 10% per night.

Is there anyone also has the same problem?
  • Battery life is atrocious

    I am about to call Garmin and see what the problem is. I've only had the 230 for maybe 4 weeks, and it seems I have to charge in every 4 days, when I was told it was 6 or 7. I then charged it after upgrading to whatever new version there is and 60 hrs later I was down to 12%. This is horrible and really unacceptable.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 8 years ago
    Back-light set to "wrist turn"?

    Is your back-light set to "wrist turn"? Some times if I run at night, I'll set my watch turn to turn the back-light on when I look at my wrist and forget to turn it off and walk around all day not noticing the back-light coming on. I found that definitely has an impact on my battery life.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 8 years ago
    Sorry for the late reply.

    Update about my watch after two weeks usage.

    With GPS enabled + activity tracking enabled, it spent ~14 hrs. The owner manual says 15 hrs so the battery life in this case seems reasonable to me.

    In watch mode with only activity tracking enabled, it consumes battery ~10% per day. It's a bit better than it was two weeks ago after I updated the firmware to 6.30. However, it's still worse than the 5.40 firmware. Looks like the watch mode consumes battery more than it should be.

    I am about to call Garmin and see what the problem is. I've only had the 230 for maybe 4 weeks, and it seems I have to charge in every 4 days, when I was told it was 6 or 7. I then charged it after upgrading to whatever new version there is and 60 hrs later I was down to 12%. This is horrible and really unacceptable.


    60 hrs with 12% left isn't acceptable :(. Does Garmin say anything about yours?

    Is your back-light set to "wrist turn"? Some times if I run at night, I'll set my watch turn to turn the back-light on when I look at my wrist and forget to turn it off and walk around all day not noticing the back-light coming on. I found that definitely has an impact on my battery life.


    No, I always disable the Wrist Turn mode. What I usually use are activity tracking (always on in the passed two weeks), GPS (only when running) and Bluetooth (always turned off after fishing syncing). Everything else is turned off.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 8 years ago
    Mine consumes 22% per day this week :( :( :(
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 8 years ago
    mine too, from fw7.1

    After upgrade to fw7.1 the battery drain very fast.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 8 years ago
    Horrible battery life on FW7.10

    I upgraded to 7.1 this week because the watch wasn't counting miles in bike mode all of a sudden. I think I was on FW5.x before the upgrade and battery life was great. Battery life sucks now, but it's counting bike miles again!!
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 8 years ago
    Problem solved?

    I upgraded to 7.1 this week because the watch wasn't counting miles in bike mode all of a sudden. I think I was on FW5.x before the upgrade and battery life was great. Battery life sucks now, but it's counting bike miles again!!


    I turned off my watch for about 10 minutes and turned it back on two days ago. The problem seems to be fixed.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 8 years ago
    Problem still persists

    A little update from me.

    Mine is now on firmware 7.3. The battery life is still horrible. It spends ~20% per day. It is much worse since I started this topic :(
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 8 years ago
    Battery Life

    Yes, battery life is horribly worse after recent updates. Currently running 7.30 but noticed a couple of weeks back significantly worse battery life. I have GPS enabled for activities + HRM + activity tracking on. Everything else off including blue tooth and notifications.
  • Hmmm...

    I'm doing well with battery life on my 230. I do notice that I do one thing different in that I do not have GPS active for activity tracking. I only use GPS when I'm going out for a run. I may be reading your post wrong, but if not, try making this adjustment and see if your battery life improves.