Significant battery drain for Vivoactive 3 after 7.70 firmware update

I understand. I may not be able to help with any exchanges but I will do my best in helping from getting our team to investigate and still do what I can from my side. 

Hi Amber, it is nice if you try to help or organise replacements. By the way I am not willing to pay any "little" fee for an replacement. My watch is just one year old and it can't be a hardware problem. It is just a software bug or simple bad programming as it all startetd straight after the update. As you can see here in this thread or even others, there are much more people with trouble after this update. I did as well 3 times a full reset a startet with a clean system without any others watch faces or widget. So far no chance to get more than 2 or 3 days out of one charging. 

Thanks for direct reply and offer to help is highly appreciated. I am located in Germany : My watch is now over 3 years, I will not get free exchange by Garmin support. As others with similar problem (in other threads) I only expect that they offer refubished for 150€. I do not want this expensive exchange to get a used watch. When the problem is not solved, it could soon happen again ... and then?

I completely understand that not always software works as expected, but here there are several people in several threads having the same problem. I think best way to deal with this is a real solution - maybe like a repair-update or diagnosing tool or hint for a 100% reset.

Therefore, I am looking forward to see this solved and I will support you with any required info, data or files if needed.

So I am in the UK and I ended up contacting Garmin's UK customer support number and told them about this issue. I was actually pleasantly surprised that after listening to me explain the issue they immediately offered to exchange my faulty watch with a replacement for no cost (except the shipping charges for me to ship the item back). I am waiting for the replacement to arrive on 6th April next week. I will keep you all posted of my experience with the replacement. I hope it does not have same issue with software version 7.70. And also I would like to know how to avoid it from automatically updating to version 7.70.

And for others in the same situation I suggest you also contact customer support. You may also be offered a replacement for free like I was. And hopefully the more of us contact Garmin the more Garmin will take notice and investigate the issue properly and hopefully fix it! I really hope that they do more quality control for their software updates.

Thanks litetaker, I just did that. Let's see what comes out of it!

Hi Amber, I'm also having this issue. Ive contacted customer support multiple times and have been through all the resets etc that have been suggested with no luck. I can see this issue is not just mine now. Can you please organise Australian customer service to deal with this issue for me? I now essentially have an expensive bracelet as the watch won't even last half a day once fully charged 

Hi Amber! I was just looking into latest post with GPS/battery drain etc. and then a "related" thread battery drain after update 7.50 was highlighted on the right side of my monitor screen. They are reporting 100% exactly the same problems 5months ago - and they -like this discussion here- tried really everything (battery change/downgrade/resets ...) and there was huge discussion. - see:

https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/healthandwellness/f/vivoactive-3-3-music/244224/battery-drain-after-update-7-50

(this discussion is locked now)

I have to correct myself: I had the dramatic battery drain BEFORE update 7.70 - it must have been fw 7.50. I desperately tried out beta firmware 7.54 (which is still available as download) but it did not solve the problem. But my watch is on fw 7.70.

There were so many posts and so many hints by users - 5 months ago - and still no solution?

Hi, of course I wish there is a proper solution as it sounds like this problem crops up every now and then. As you pointed out the 7.50 version seems to have such issues as well, and now the 7.70 version has again caused issues for some. It seems like it is not effecting ALL owners of the watch or else I feel like we would see a ton more complaining online and hopefully Garmin would have realized it is a far more serious issue. But somehow may be due to some random chance or something the software is causing some strange behaviour on some devices and causing them to drain too much!

By the way, I got the replacement Vivoactive 3 and I am glad Garmin is being reasonable and at least doing something to help the customers. It is currently on software version 7.50 and so far seems to have very reasonable battery drain that is on par to what I would expect the watch to have without issues. I hope it continues to have good battery life even after it auto-updates to 7.70.

But just in case, Amber, is there any way to disable auto-updates? I really do not see any particular benefits or improvements from the updates and I like the way the device operates on 7.50. So if I can freeze it here and disable auto-updates I can be happy! Or else I sincerely hope this issue does not come again when it updates to 7.70 and also I hope Garmin can investigate the issue from the faulty device I returned and figure out a proper fix for this once and for all!

Hello! I am so sorry for the issues. Unfortunately, the updates can not be disabled. The only way would for the device not to be paired and that is not ideal.