Garmin Edge Explore battery indicator ?

[kingrollo]

Been getting very poor battery life from my edge explore. But now it seems to have gone to the other extreme!

Last night did a 2 hour ride - HRM - and Varia radar lights running. This morning switched on garmin to check charge showing 99% . I am wondering if this has been the problem all along - that the battery charge figure has been wrong all along - so I go out thinking I have a full charge - but then after cycling a while - it sorts itself out - and the % charge goes down drastically

Anyone else experience anything like this ?

 

[Milkfloat]

My old 520 used to drop fairly quickly to 10%, however after that you could easily ride another 3 hours without it dropping at all. I just tended to charge it before a ride and not look at the power level again.

 

[Tom B]

Interesting.. I wonder If garm have done one of their beta testing updates....

My 820 unusually munched through about 40% battery on a 90min ride yesterday. Far more than usual.

 

[andrew_s]

It's what batteries do.

A simple battery gauge is basically just a voltmeter.
A fully charged lithium battery is about 4.2 V, drops fairly soon to 3.8 or so, then decreases steadily down to around 3.2 V, then starts to drop more quickly. Usually the battery management system turns off at around 3 V as taking the voltage too low wrecks the battery.

However, a part used battery will recover somewhat after being given an overnight rest, with the voltage having increased when you turn back on.
There's no extra charge been put in, so the voltage drops back down fairly soon (10 minutes?).

The best thing is to check at the end of the ride rather than at the start.

 

[Tom B]

It's what batteries do.

.....

The best thing is to check at the end of the ride rather than at the start.

Which is precisely when you don't want to do it.

Thanks for the info, you'd expect "smart devices" to have some level of compensation for the non liner nature.

I have noticed the quick drop off from 100% which isn't normally and issue. My suprise was the drop off from about 44% to under 10% in far less time than I expected.

But I think I've figured it out. I left it in my pocket for a while so the back light would have been on full whack for a good while.