Battery going down when playing football

[LiamTaylor1996]

Hi Everyone 

I have a question and when I play football my sense battery goes down a bit more then normal I had 77% and after foootball I have 69% battery now is that normal because I'm new to the sense 2 many thanks Liam 

[Guy_]

Hi @LiamTaylor1996 - this can be because the display can come on more frequently and possibly GPS may be enabled.

Before you start playing pull down on the watch face to get to Quick Settings and turn on button wake only and be sure in watch Settings to set Display, Timeout to 6s, you can also adjust the screen wake in Display too there.

[LZeeW]

@LiamTaylor1996  You asked about GPS tracking in your previous posts and I recommended the Sport shortcut.  Built in GPS uses a lot of battery.  That battery drain seems typical for the length of a match.

[t.parker]

@LiamTaylor1996 What @LZeeW says is on point. I use Sense 2 with GPS on daily basis and ~1 hour of GPS often "costs" about 7-10% of battery life (yesterday 1hr20min run drained 15%). Nothing unusual. On the other hand, do you need to use GPS for football? I don't play myself but seeing my friends posting on Strava their football activities, the GPS map looks like a drunk fly tries to find way home 🙂 It is different for activities like running or cycling to have a route (for own analysis, when you have changing elevation, weather, surfaces etc. but it also happened that I "stole" somebody else's route to try it for myself :D) but football - I can't quite see sense in using GPS on the football pitch.

[LiamTaylor1996]

@t.parker & @LZeeW I don’t use gps for football and I just use it normally with no exercise on because it on auto exercise only buddy

@Guy_ I have button press and dim screen and 6s timeout on too. 👍🏻

[Guy_]

@LiamTaylor1996  - thanks for the update, all looks good, but doesn't explain the high battery drain. 16% per day, a bit less at night compared to day due to less use is normally possible.

There remains some improbable issues, sweat has got in and is causing high battery drain but this would be a permanent issue, another is if you don't take your phone on the field when you play that the watch is desperately seeking the phone, or is in and out of sync if its nearby at times, or lastly you were late for a meeting and the watch was vibrating a long time unnoticed.

Have a chat via the Fitbit App, click profile photo, Help & support, Contact Customer support. They may be aware of other issues.

Try restarting both watch and phone and see if it happens again.

[t.parker]

@LiamTaylor1996 if you don't use GPS and your activity is tracked automatically then it really hard to say what is going on there. I assumed you followed @LZeeW last advice and tracked Sport with GPS and that would explain the battery drain easier. If not, there are a few things to look at like trying to use default Sense 2 watchface and see if it makes any difference or other things that @Guy_ mentioned.

Another thing is not using auto-tracking. I know that it's one of Fitbit's selling points but if you think about it, the less happening in the background, the more control you have over the device. If device is tracking your activity in the background then it's no telling what happens there.

Just curious:

- Has your football been recognized by watch and if so what kind of activity the watch recorded? Some activities may enable GPS when auto-recognized. It's a long shot but the more details you provide, the better.

- You didn't say how long the activity actually was. I know the length of one football match but there are many variants like 5-a-side etc.