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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 3 years ago in reply to 8390248

    I was told to wash the watch in luke-warm water and reboot.

  • +1 over 3 years ago
    There is device specific information that we can use to determine the best route forward, that may include exchange for some users. Please reach out to your local support team using support.garmin.com for assistance with this. Thank you for your cooperation.
  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Garmin-AmberD

    I am in Saudi arabia,  I have been told to send email to Garmin support UAE, Which happed with no response from them

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to 1672566

    I apologize you have not heard back just yet, I unfortunately will need you to still go through their support. 

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Garmin-AmberD

    The good news:  After applying beta version 7.2 my watch seems to be fixed.  Battery life so far is back to normal and it is back to communicating with my phone.  I will monitor it for another couple of weeks and report back.

    The bad news: This is CLEARLY a software issue and Garmin is slow in responding to it.  It's not a good look, in fact it is really clumsy and as a Garmin fan since buying my first GPS unit years ago and onto my second watch, this could be helped by a more proactive and broader response.  I realise this could be legally challenging taking ownership of a watch-bricking software issue.  But when the issue is as transparent as this one, while you may not have everyone asking for their money back Garmin does risk losing many supporters.

    So far I am glad to get my vivoactive 3 back in working order, but Garmin please learn from and rethink your support strategy.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to uberkiwi_nz

    Is that Beta 7.72? I tried it and didn't get any better battery life. Lost 30%+ overnight. But I wonder if the VA3 has had some hardware upgrades over it's life. Mine is 3.5 years old, and most of the complaints seem to be with units more than 2 years old. 

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to chanskat

    Yep, Beta 7.2.  I had seen that someone on here was unsuccessful with it (probably you?) but thought I would try anyway.  I had reset my watch to default settings first (a few times) before running the install, perhaps that may help?  It's early days yet, I will see how the watch performs over the next few weeks and report back.  My watch is over 2 years old.  It's issue was the battery wasn't lasting 12 hours, it was slow, it had sensor issues in the error file in the garmin folder and would not connect via bluetooth to my phone (but would sync via cable to my laptop).  All these issues are now gone.  Perhaps try the update again?

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to Garmin-AmberD

    I contacted the number given. The support staff told me they have not heard of any battery drain issues from internal department. I suggested to her to read Garmin forum on all the concerns on battery drain bought up by Garmin Vivoactive 3 users. As expected she can't do much as she mentioned that I need to pay to get the watch replaced

    I don't understand why is my fault when the firmware update causing battery drain, result in me need to pay for replacement or repair?

    I asked her is there a way I can downgrade the software, as expected the answer is no.

    So now I am at a lost what can I do?

    My apologies if I sounded angry, this is ridiculous that a Garmin Fireware update that resulted in my watch problem, become my problem to solve

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to uberkiwi_nz

    So tried 7.72 Beta again. Restore Defaults on watch (in effect a factory reset), installed 7.72 Beta via USB on computer. No difference in battery rate. Started at 100% at 7AM, At 1:00PM (6 hours later) at 63%. Perhaps an issue with differing hardware as my watch is 3.5 years old. Despite the age I was charging every 4 or 5 days before the 7.70 update. I'd be happy to remain on the previous version of the software and forgo any additional functionality but apparently that isn't possible.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to uberkiwi_nz

    You’re right.  It’s the software causing the issue because mine was fixed by applying the 7.72 beta update (doesn’t seem to fix all watches).  It should not cost you money to replace a watch they have broken.   Garmin should also learn from this and put an option to return to the last update assuming that is stable.

    I believe the reason Garmin are being so coy is they don’t want to be liable for releasing software that can break your watch