Battery life 5 hours with built-in GPS?

[t.parker]

It sounds like downgrade comparing to Sense. I know there is a connected GPS listed in features but I'm curious why for the new device the battery life with GPS went so drastically down.

[N8teGee]

Hi @t.parker.

Have you got a link to where this is mentioned? It does seem rather disappointing if it is the case, although it could be an error (which isn't unlikely) in Fitbit's documentation. 

[t.parker]

@N8teGee it's in the specs section:

Probably main reason why Sense 2 comes with connected GPS.

[N8teGee]

Thanks for that @t.parker. 

[deiG]

One of the most common complains about Sense and Versa 3 is the low performance built-in GPS. So I think Sense 2 and Versa 4 are equipped with a built-in GPS with better performance, but the drawback is more power consumption.

[Guy_]

Wasn't the GPS rated for 12 hours on the Sense 1?

So either GPS uses more energy or the watch has a smaller, or not bigger battery capacity.

Comparing the battery capacity / charging gives the following difference which implies a slower charging, possibly to reduce the charge current and charging issues.

Sense Battery & Power

Battery life up to 6+ days. Battery life and charge cycles vary with use, settings, and other factors; actual results will vary. Use of the always-on display and SpO2 features will require more frequent charging. We recommend charging every few days to ensure you’re always tracking.

Battery type: Lithium-polymer
Charge time: (10-80%): Approximately 40 minutes
Fast charging: 1 day of battery life in 12 minutes
Radio transceiver: Bluetooth®Sense 2 Battery & Power

Battery life of 6+ days. Battery life and charge cycles vary with use, settings and other factors; actual results will vary. We recommend charging your tracker every few days to ensure you are always tracking.

Battery type: Lithium-polymer
Charge time (0-100%): Two hours
Radio transceiver: Bluetooth® 5.0

No battery capacity is stated.

[t.parker]

@deiG in general, I haven't experienced serious issues with GPS. Mostly long connecting and my first Sense had problems with reconnecting (after running under tunnel etc.). Accuracy however was pretty much the same as everything else in the market and occassionally beats my GF6Pro (which sometimes experiences GPS drift and one time it broke my PBs in Strava). I know that users complain mostly about the distance calculation but that isn't calculated with the GPS which has been proven on multiple occassions. GPS may be involved but numbers are showing that there is lot more to it (I explained that once as well, how modern distance tracking is done and doing it with GPS would be a big mistake). I would be quite happy if at least long connection time was resolved. Otherwise, GPS in Sense is one of things I have no serious complaints. So the fact that GPS reduces battery life that much is quite strange. Sense doesn't deliver 12hrs (maybe out-of-box in perfect lab conditions) but usually battery goes down 10% per hour so we are close to 10 hours. That makes me assume that 5hrs of Sense 2 is also a perfect conditions number (hence "up to") and it's very unlikely in real-world conditions for the battery to last this long and that's disappointing.

[LZeeW]

I just want to chime in that my personal experience with Versa 3 GPS is also 10% per hour.

[N8teGee]

@t.parker yeah it's very worrying to have it so low out of the box.

I had to explain to someone on readit earlier who questioned why the hell I would need 5 hours of GPS battery life. My reasoning was that its 5 hours with a brand new battery and once their battery degrades they my only be able to manage 3 hours in a few months. Also that the previous Sense was marketed with 12 hours and the closest Garmin competitor with 24 hours. So why the huge downgrade? 

Even if they have no use for 5 hours in one go, it will still mean more charging in the long run and a negative effect on the long term battery health. Even if someone used GPS for 2 hours a day, that will pretty much mean they will have to charge it at least every other day. 

[t.parker]

@N8teGee very good point. Best case scenario assumes using 20% of battery with GPS within an hour. Somebody may not need 5 hours but 1 hour of running or cycling daily is quite common and that already eats 1/5 of battery. Next day will add another 20% gone and from 6+ days (as advertised) it will be no more than using new Pixel watch 😁 I think the advice here will be to use connected GPS but that is a huge step backwards. While competitors advertise longer and longer battery life with the GPS, Fitbit falls back to many years old solution. This is indeed worrying.

[t.parker]

@N8teGee just to add something. The new Galaxy 5 Pro watch (which is WearOS watch, Samsung ditched Tizen on wearables) is claimed to last 20 hours with continuous GPS. Knowing short battery life on Galaxy watches I would be happy with 50-60% of that time in real-world conditions and it's still more than Sense 2 (that also tells us what we may possibly expect from Pixel watch). Once battery life was the biggest selling point of Fitbit but it was time when trackers had almost no features. Now, it is important to have decent battery life with the features platform offers and company seems to struggle with that.

[t.parker]

Now this 5 hours looks really poor comparing to the original Sense. Yesterday, my wife and I went hiking in the mountains which took total of 12h07m. My Sense was tracking hike with GPS and eventually died but it died at 11h44m (Fitbit has to work on better way of recovering those activities during which watch dies but that's different story). It started with 95% of battery so probably could last little longer than 12 hours if battery was full. This is in fact accurate with the specs of Sense (and I must admit, I am surprised and impressed considering other power consumption issues I experience with Sense). I think Fitbit by mistake swapped models of Sense and released better one 2 years before the worse one 😛

[Guy_]

@t.parker - it does look like the new ones are Lite versions, but it may be possible to use the phone GPS, like for a Versa 2, that way you get a much better battery life all round. 

The sense and Versa 3 don't allow use of the phone GPS.

[t.parker]

@Guy_ I know I couldn't use connected GPS with Sense but considering yesterday circumstances I needed every bit of battery of my mobile phone. I used navigation on Garmin and used mobile phone GPS only to quickly adjust the course and then upload it to the watch. Watch was navigating me through the forest alpine trail in the middle of night (don't ask how we got there, not everything went according to the plan 😂). Sense was just recording the hike but it came as a surprise that battery lasted that long. Probably these are rare situations but sometimes phone battery is more important than watch so built-in GPS is actually better way to go (if only it can last this long). Still, Fitbit is way behind Garmin in that matter (battery 54% down to 17% on GPS during 12hrs hike and maps navigation, it's just 3% per hour) but pity the newer Fitbit models are not trying to improve that but go in the opposite direction.

[N8teGee]

@t.parker It really depends. It could be argued that your phone with a power bank, and the Sense using connected GPS would have been the best solution in your situation.

The point being is that it's best to have the options (onboard and connected GPS) so that the user can decide what's best for them.