Garmin Fenix 7 series battery drain, incorrect heart rate monitoring & restarting during activity after v9.36 update, issues acknowledged

Garmin is one of the best-known names in the segment of sports wearables and GPS devices. The company’s smartwatch series focuses on providing accurate monitoring of users’ physical activities and health status.

The Garmin Fenix 7 series arrived in January of this year. These are high-end and very resistant sports smartwatches full of features to encourage you to improve your physical condition.

Recently, the Fenix 7 series received the v9.36 update. However, it seems that the new firmware also brought multiple problems.

More specifically, the Garmin Fenix 7 series update is causing battery drain, incorrect heart rate monitoring and devices restarting during physical activity.

According to multiple reports, Garmin Fenix 7 series users are dealing with noticeable battery drain after installing the v9.36 update, even in standby mode.

Apparently, the smart watch is consuming an excessive amount of battery even when you are not doing any physical activity. A user points to consumption of around 12% per hour.

Fenix 7 Software v9.36 drains my battery

Hi All, I have received the v9.36 software on my Garmin Fenix 7 Saturday. Yesterday I noticed the battery going down fast, while not doing any activities. Today I started with 6days battery left, now 8 hours later I am on 18 hours battery left.
Source

Fenix 7 Solar 9.36 Battery consumption

Hello All, I bought a fenix 7 solar few month ago to replace an vertix. I choosed an F7 instead of a F6 Pro for the autonomy gain (near of the vertix). But I am really disapointed, from the stard and in a normal usage (without activity) the avenrage consumption is near of 12%.
Source

The Garmin team is already aware of this issue and working to resolve it. However, there is no ETA for a fix yet.

Our engineering team is working on resolving the issue as soon as possible.
Source

The battery drain bug after the v9.36 update is also affecting the Garmin Epix 2, another of the company’s high-end smartwatches.

Epix 2 battery drain 9:36

Updated to 9.36 but the issue still remains. Using Garmin stock face, gesture mode. Garmin gives me 14 days but battery only lasts 6 days.
Source

Garmin has also acknowledged this issue and, as with the Fenix 7 series, they are working on a fix but there is no ETA yet.

The Garmin Fenix 7 series is also causing a noticeable degradation in the accuracy of the ‘heart rate monitoring’ feature. The smartwatch is recording irregular and unreliable measurements after v9.36 update.

Has 9.33/9.36 ruined heart rate monitoring?

Hi! After upgrading my my fenix 7 to 9.33 I have noticed a few odd things about the heart rate that’s displayed/recorded on my watch. Here’s what I noticed:

First run with the new Firmware: My old H7 chest strap sensor, which worked fine before, showed sudden drops in HR of about 30 bpm while running at a constant pace…

…I thought was just the chest strap, but then I noticed sudden mayor changes in HR with the integrated HR sensor as well, when I was just at home. Within 2 seconds it jumped or dropped by about 20 bpm.
Source

Fortunately, the Garmin team is also aware of this bug. But as with previous cases, there is no ETA for a fix yet.

In addition to the above, some Garmin Fenix 7 devices updated to v9.36 firmware are restarting during physical activities.

Interestingly, this problem reportedly occurs in particular areas. If you avoid going through the area where the ‘crashing’ occurs, the watch will not restart.

Fenix 7 sapphire solar – v9.36 – Restarts During Activity

hello, i now had the problem of restart(s) during my last 2 runs, which resulted in not getting the run synced via mobile app then.
Source

Once again, the Garmin team is working on resolving this issue, but there is no ETA for a fix yet.

We will update this story as events unfold in the future.

Featured image: Garmin

PiunikaWeb started as purely an investigative tech journalism website with main focus on ‘breaking’ or ‘exclusive’ news. In no time, our stories got picked up by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and many others. Want to know more about us? Head here.