Battery drain

kosmoplan

@Mff73 great advice, that Q1. Thank you!

StanAjax

Hi everyone and happy sportive new year to all !

First, thanks to everyone here for providing feed-back on the issue, be it the regular users or the mods that can also provide information from Suunto.

I will add my “case” to the topic, though I am not sure I can provide more information in order to help solve the issue…

I’ve bought a Race a bit less than 2 monthes ago. Ironically, it was both a birthday present and a panic buy because my 2-year-old 9 Baro suffered a battery drain 6 days before I did my first marathon ! The issue was solved with both a soft and hard reset (didn’t have time for too much testing !), thanks to my readings on the forum, and I finally used the 9 Baro for the marathon.

The Race is great, and, to me, is the perfect upgrade on my 9 Baro. Though, from the first discharge cycle, I noticed it was discharging too fast (being a bit sensitive on the topic at that moment…).
I didn’t charge it when I received it (it was >80%), so, maybe that’ the reason I said to myself. First charge, download maps, and following a bit more the battery discharge, I noticed that it was discharging too fast, especially at night. It seems especially true the night after an activity, though I wasn’t fully monitoring then.

So, I contacted the Support Team and followed their advices for parameters, that have already been described here multiple times (though, outside activites, I am always in Airplane / Eco mode). Also did the factory reset as asked and started monitoring after a full charge.

Support Team asked me to send the watch to a Service Center for it to be repaired. It was a bit longer than expected due to a UPS strike here (can’t blame them, just before Christmas is when they have a better negotiation power !). Quickly, the Service Center sent me a replacement watch, that I started monitoring just after I got it on Christmas Eve.

Everything was perfectly fine (~2% battery loss per day in Airplane / Eco mode and ~2% per hour in Performance mode seems very in line with the watch specs’) until 2025 arrived…
20% loss overnight !
Not after a day with an activity though, but when the battery was a bit lower, which is a different behaviour than the previous watch (battery started to drain the first night, though it was after a couple charge cycles).

I tried to contact the Support Team through mail and chat today, but though it is not announced that they are closed for the holidays, I guess there is less staff available today and tomorrow…

My return window is opened until January 15th, so I am not waiting longer and sending it back for a refund. It is truly a shame as the watch is really exactly what I was looking for (just not sure of the durability of the crown button), though I will wait for Suunto to solve the issues before buying another one and use my 9 Baro in the mean time.

Hopefully, 2025 will bring better news than my January 1st drain "gift’ and you will all be able to enjoy your Vertical / Race (S) / Peak (Pro) at their full capacity !
Good luck to the Suunto IT team in their research to correct the issues in the firmware / software of their watches.

larrybbaker

@StanAjax keep in mind this is a Vertical forum and not Race. I am not seeing any difference on the change of the year and with the last FW update my Vertical is back to great battery life.

StanAjax

@larrybbaker Thanks, I know that this is a Vertical forum.

Which is a shame (not to have a cross-watch topic on this issue, guess we have to deal with how the forum is built) because the same issue seems to affect Vertical, Race (S) and 9 Peak (Pro) from what I read (including the 709 messages prior to mine and the closed-by-admin-and-redirected-to-this-topic messages on the Race forum. So, I just wanted to avoid that step as admins seem to gather all battery drain issues that are related to the same software used by the different watches.

By the way, I finally had contact with Support Team through chat this afternoon.
Nothing new to test (suggesting a hard reset on a watch just sent and tested by Service Center), but I was told that a software / firmware update is scheduled for January. No precise date yet.

Hopefully, that solves the issue for everyone and all watches this time. Fingers crossed !

Pavlas

Hi, If I understand correctly, the discharge problem is still not solved? What is your experience with the Vertical’s endurance now? For me, it’s around 5% in 24 hours with HR and notifications (I don’t have many of those, only call notifications) and no activity.
It still seems too much to me.
I had the Ocean on test now and the endurance was similar - 5-6% in 24 hours with the same settings.
Ocean and Race don’t seem to have that problem. Is the problem only with the Vertical?

Ars Vitae

@Pavlas For me, the last two updates have completely solved the problem, so it must be a matter of either individual settings or individual procedures for dealing with the problem. I don’t think, given my and others’ experience, that this applies specifically to a particular watch model. This is just my opinion.
I use the notification rarely on expeditions, only when the phone is hidden in the bag and I want to be up to date on who is trying to contact me. From what I remember, battery consumption is then higher (also for the phone). But I guess that’s normal, the devices run in the background maintaining a constant connection.
My daily battery consumption without notifications, HR and workouts is about 1 - 1.5%. In my experience HR adds about 1% of daily consumption, I only turn it on at night for sleep monitoring. Adding active notifications I think you are probably within the optimal range of battery consumption.

larrybbaker

@Pavlas For me the latest FW has greatly improved the battery issues I was seeing with the Vertical.

Kramble

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos @SuperFlo75
Since the last update I did a full charge battery and a soft reset then after two weeks of testing, my average battery consuming per day is about 3% with OHR 24h / sleep tracking/ usual notifications and no activities (against 5% after this summer update)
Everything seems to go back normal now , and I can say that for my solar vertical the little drain battery bug is fixed .
Well done Suunto !

Mff73

@Mff73 said in Battery drain:

@Mff73 said in Battery drain:

@Mff73 said in Battery drain:

Fully charged mine yesterday from 0%
9% lost in 24 hours without any activity.
No soft reset, just charged.

[edit]
24/24 HR on
notifications on
Sleep tracking on
SPO2 on
everything like when i purchased it at launch

today’s stats :
Charged from 0% to 100% on Oct 6th.
Today : 22% left --> 78% lost in total in 12 days
17% battery lost in 9h36 of GPS activity
So 61% lost for 12 days, non include GPS activity (avg = 5% / day)
.

today’s stats :
Charged from 10% to 100% on Nov 11th.
Today : 15% left --> 85% lost in total in 10 days
32% battery lost in 17h50 of GPS activity
So 53% lost for 10 days, non include GPS activity (avg = 5.3% / day)

today’s stats :
Charged from 7% to 100% on Jan 5th.
Today : 38% left --> 62% lost in total in 12 days
17% battery lost in 9h37 of GPS activity
So 45% lost for 12 days, non include GPS activity (avg = 3.75% / day)

SV with latest 2.39.20 FW.
My battery consumption improved (i feel it). Btw, i just checked and change two settings (linked or not, i don’t know) : Coinnectivity / Discovery & Wifi : on --> off

let see how many time my current 38% will last

MarioPedraza

I’ve been studying the battery consumption of my Race for some time. I have the “Battery Levels by Activity” field in Intervals and I can see that until September 3, the battery life exceeded ten days and suddenly, from that date on, it has never exceeded 8 days. Firmware version 2.37.34 came out on September 4. Right now it does not exceed 6/7 days (with the same configuration and use of the watch). I did a factory reset, and it doesn’t seem to have improved, 12% battery lost daily without GPS activity.

MarioPedraza

@StanAjax
I don’t expect any battery improvements after the January version. For Suunto the battery problems are solved. It is not our case. I hope I’m wrong.