suddenly odd behavior and poor battery life

[jasonnet]

Normally the battery lasts about two day.  

Last night my Versa2 behaved oddly.  The screen saver appeared and it would not return to the watch face.   I put it in the charger and it seemed to recover a bit.    The charging screen looked different than I've seen before.  I don't recall the exact battery level right now, but it wasn't low enough to concern me.  'probably over 50%.  I went to bed with it.  

In the middle of the night I noticed it was responding to button clicks with just a small dot.  I'm guessing that means the battery is low. 

By morning it was unresponsive.   I put it in the charger and it indicated 0% battery.   It eventually came up to 99% in about an hour.  The charging screen looked more normal this time.   I put it on, but the battery seems to be depleting rapidly.  Otherwise it seems normal.  I project it will be at 0% in four hours after being at 99%.    That's much more rapid than normal for this watch.

Oddly, the Fitbit App on my Pixel 5a does show the fitbit as syncing, but it also claims the watch battery is "Battery Full".   At this point 9:43am, the watch shows it to be 82%.

I suppose the battery could have suddenly failed, but I suspect something else is happening in software to cause it not to conserve battery power and misrepresent that battery level in the Fitbit app.   I've switched from the custom watch face (Driftwood Computer Systems, MoveIt!) to Fitbit's Waveform watch face to see if that makes a difference.   I also did the 10sec long button press this morning to restart the watch once.

[Guy_]

Hi @jasonnet - sorry, but such sudden change in behaviour and rapid drain are normally associated with water ingression commencing damage.

You can try and dry it out in a bag of rice for a few days but it may not fully recover. Also check the back sensor windows with a magnifying glass for condensation.

If it is under warranty get it replaced where you bought it.

[jasonnet]

Thanks.  

I don't think it's the problem this time, but it's definitely good to know.

Details:  I've not been around water.   The house is very dry.  And the back sensors don't look cloudy at all.  And... now the discharge is not happening so fast, so I'm guessing the problem was the watch face that I was using.

[Guy_]

@jasonnet  - thanks for the feedback - it seems very odd for the battery to last only 4 hours.

When you swipe up the watch face you get the actual battery level, the one in the app can be misleading as it is when it last synced.

Try changing clock face if you got a white dot but better still do a watch restart.

Sync the watch with the Fitbit App, then in watch Settings, About, do Shutdown.  Wait at least 10 seconds before restarting or placing on the charger.

See how that goes.