Battery Drain Issue

[salbei38]

I bought my Bangle.js2 roughly half a year ago and I was very happy with it until a few days ago. I used to charge it roughly once a week, but since a few days, the battery drops quite fast and it only lasts about 8 hours.

I barely use Bluetooth or GPS. I thought maybe one of my apps is consuming the energy, somehow GPS is enabled, or it tries communicating with my phone the whole time as I had some bluetooth connection problems the last few weeks.

What I tested so far:

factory reset -> I reinstalled all my apps -> did not solve the battery issue
factory reset -> I did not install any apps and only changed two settings (LCD brightness to 0.3 and theme to dark) -> did not solve the battery issue

My Bangle.js2 has the current (2v28) firmware version.

Does someone has an idea what could cause the battery drain issue?

[gfwilliams]

Hi - sorry to hear you're having problems. Can you remember if the increased power draw coincided with anything in particular?

Thanks for trying the factory reset - did the second option (reset and not installing your apps) still have the increased battery drain?

[salbei38]

Hi, thanks for reaching out. Unfortunately not. I was using the same setup for a couple of weeks without installing any new apps. As far as I remember I haven't installed any updates in a while or changed any settings.

Sorry, I forgot to add it in the description (updated it now). The second option did also not solve the problem.

[gfwilliams]

Thanks for the update! It does sound like a hardware issue. Does the watch feel warm anywhere in particular?

I have heard cases where the heart rate monitor gets warm. The other possibility is have you been showering/swimming with the watch on at all? While it's designed to handle getting quick submersion, if it's repeated or for a long time, water can get inside and that could have caused conduction between contacts that would cause the battery to run down quicker.

If that's the case, it may be that letting it run down and putting it somewhere warm and dry for a week would help it dry out and would fix it...

[salbei38]

Thank you for your reply.

No, the watch does not feel warm at any particular point.

I did not wear the watch while showering/swimming... But anyhow its worth a try. I will try to dry it as you suggested and will get back to you in a week.

[gfwilliams]

Just a random thought - do you leave your Bangle to charge overnight? Just that the charge indicator isn't great, so if you took the Bangle off charge as soon as it shows 100% then you're only going to get a fraction of the normal charge. Also because the Bangle doesn't draw a lot of power when charging, some chargers can actually think nothing is connected and turn off after a while.

Let's see how it goes with drying it, but as the Bangle's only 6 months old and it doesn't sound like it's been mistreated in any way I'm sure we can sort something out to get it fixed.

[Darin755]

I am having this same issue with my watch. I own two units and they both have suffered heavily from battery degradation.

After doing some research it seems that this isn't a isolated problem. @gfwilliams It might be worth investigating this more for the banglejs 3

[gfwilliams]

As you posted just now about the button which appeared to be an issue with there being water inside the watch, I'd think there's a very high likelihood that's what it is in this case

I'm definitely very focussed on making sure a new Bangle.js will be reliably watersealed inside, but even so it won't be suitable for repeated/long periods of immersion in water (showers, swimming, baths, etc)

[Darin755]

Just out of curiosity, why would water cause battery issues? Wouldn't water just kill the hardware?

[gfwilliams]

Pure water itself doesn't kill the hardware, but any salts or conductive things in the water will. Over time the conduction between pins corrodes the board/components - as well as increasing power draw.

In the case of the button, that extra conduction makes the button appear as if it's pressed down.

You can end up with corrosion (or even salts) then staying between the contacts even when the device is dry (particularly if it's kept powered when wet) and then power draw always stays high and eventually something will get so shorted it stops working.

It's why if you know the device got wet, we suggest doing the discharge option from the Settings menu (which will itself make the device a bit warm) and then leaving it somewhere dry and warm for a week to ensure everything's really dried out.