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Significant battery drain for Vivoactive 3 after 7.70 firmware update

litetaker
over 4 years ago

I am not sure when exactly my Vivoactive 3 updated to version 7.70. But it was sometime recently. And for the last few days I am noticing that the battery life of my Vivoactive 3 has gone down significantly! I am only getting about 1 day of battery life on a full charge, sometimes even less than 24 hours!

My watch is more than 2.5 years old and when I measured my battery life a month or two ago, I was easily getting more than 5 days on a full charge with heart rate measurement on. And I believe I was getting around 5 days on a full charge even a few weeks ago. But this week I am suddenly noticing less than a day of battery! I am very upset with this sudden and massive decrease in battery life. Looking at the forums here, it seems like many people are experiencing poor battery life with the latest update. I am very disappointed with Garmin for this poor quality update and I really hope they fix it so that my watch is usable again! It is such a great device and I am upset that bad software updates may be causing such massive problems! Please fix it!

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to joen2021

    Thanks Joen. My theory is that there are several hardware versions and updates just won't work right with all of them. Some users still have solid battery time though. And Garmin just does not care as this is not a new model when there are VA4 and Venue. Apparently their logic is that sparing the time of the tech team on dealing with old mistakes is not the priority when they can develop newer models. This all made me develop suspicion to other models. I checked this forum for FR245, 645 and 935 and I see they all have problems and Garmin is not jumping out to their pant to solve them. So with this general policy of Garmin - buy new models (and if you're lucky they work good more or less) I'd rather stay away from Garmin.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to 8390248

    Hi, yes - similar topics for other of their watches, too. But some people experience battery drain now after few months, some after year, some after two years. If it would be connected with hardware used, I would suspect only hardware from certain time of production would be affected. That does not seem the case here. An other point is that obviously after almost every update there is a bunch of people reporting always the same problem with battery, and they blame it to the update. This seems the repeating pattern here.

    and for some suggested resets work ...for some (unlucky) they don't work ...

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to joen2021

    Hey Joen,

    I think unfortunately we cannot expect much from Garmin's side since it does not affect all users equally as we've seen in the past couple of pages of this thread. Investigating this issue from their side would mean investing costly development resources in an obsolete product. I guess that Amber from customer support does what she can with the resources she was given. In the end Apple does the same whenever something goes wrong on your 2 year old product: they simply proposes a refurbished unit (at a cost), or you just have to buy the latest and greatest every couple of months. It's the kind of crap that made me stop buying their products.

    I still need to contact my local Garmin support just out of curiosity to see what they propose (I'm guessing I'm going to get the typical "try resetting it. Otherwise you can buy a refurbished unit for 90€") but I don't think I'll buy another Garmin watch if in 2 years it's again the same dance with them. Shame, I thought it was an otherwise pretty good product overall.

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    I just came here to make the same complaint. My VA3 is going from 100% charge to completely dead in 14 hours. Are Garmin going to fix this or are they pulling a Fitbit and hoping we'll all buy new devices?

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Prenna

    Prenna, you caught the essence of this thread. We hope they will do something but its unlikely.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Flutiofluo

    Hi flutiofluo, that is how it seems. But People are not that numb to buy from same brand after a bad experience. That may work maximum once ... And yes, I think anyone should contact support parallel to consult this user-forum. If the standard recommendations (resets/no apps....) do not work they can either insist demanding a solution or just skip the effort and buy other brand.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to joen2021

    Hello! I am still working with my team and this has been escalated, I apologize I do not have more of an update just yet. 

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Garmin-AmberD

    Thanks Amber, your efforts are highly appreciated.

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Same! I've gone from about 5 days of battery to 2ish. I haven't changed any settings or usage. 

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Same issue here! 

    Went from 5 days to 1 day of battery life.