A new low on battery life - 5hr 30 - is that normal?
At what point does poor battery become a defective battery - barely managed 5 hours today on a 100 mile ride, and the last 25% lasted barely half an hour, with pretty much everything disconnected and power saving mode on? Other than the normal advice on connections/use/etc., is this to be expected for an under 1 year old unit?
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Seems like the downside of their constant software updates is they don't seem to do enough beta testing. How can you with a device with such few users and such complex uses? But at least they usually fix the bugs (like battery life drain) that show up in their new software releases within a couple weeks.
(If you do a lot of really long rides, sounds like the new solar powered Garmin may be for you.)
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I had exactly the same problem 3 days ago. A 5h30 bike ride completely discharged the battery, and the last 25% lasted just over 30 minutes. I finished my ride with the karoo2 dead and turned off!
Such a low battery life in summer time is prohibitive. I had to use my old elemnt Bolt today: after a 5h47 ride, 52% battery left!
Hammerehead should fix this bug very soon, but it seems that the mid-July update is not available!
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Try a hard reset. All your data (profiles, routes, rides, etc.) are backed up, so it's not like you have to reconfigure the device again. The exception I think is repairing sensors.
A few days ago I forgot to charge, and had 27% battery at the start of a ride. I completed a 3 hour ride with 9% left by using battery save mode. I have the newest software, so if you do too, that's not blame....I don't think :)
https://support.hammerhead.io/hc/en-us/articles/360058853573-Karoo-2-Performing-a-Hard-Reset
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Curious if those who are experiencing poor battery life have settings like 'auto CLIMBER' turned off? Since that feature came out, I've certainly noticed a higher drain in battery. Not something I particularly care about but might be worth looking into if you're still having the drain issues. Also, in my experience using graphs and other 'fancy' data fields also put a higher drain on the battery.
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I have some questions in relation to battery life. Hammerhead know that certain functions drain battery life a lot quicker than others. I think we can all agree on that. My 1st question, therefore, is why have Hammerhead introduced those features without addressing the battery drain issue BEFORE they release them?
Hammerhead also suggest, with a straight face, to use the 'battery save' option if you are on a longer ride. Why should users have to reduce the use of the features just so they can have a unit that might record their complete ride. Again, maybe Hammerhead would be better served in improving their industry-worst battery life functionality!
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@Steve I can see your point but in many industries that is not real application. There are many apps you can use on an iPhone or iPad that drain battery life exponentially. Stepping on the gas peddle and going faster uses more fuel. These are 'features' and are up to the users to decide if its worth the 'cost', ie: less battery life. Not releasing new features because it'll adversely impact battery life seems a bit much if we have the ability to turn the feature on or off.
I'm not advocating for HH here, I've had battery drain on previous units that was upwards of 20% per hour, which HH deemed defective after review. Typically, I see anywhere between 8% (on a good day) to 12% (on a high usage day, with many data page changes and media rich fields).
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Apparently in May 2021 I managed to record a 12-hour activity (including 3 h of pauses) where I had the screen on for the first 2 h and battery saver after that on a single charge. A year later, 8 h 40 min (20 min stopped) with battery saver on the whole time was enough to drain the battery completely. Screen at ~20%, PM and HRM paired, routing on, SIM installed. I refuse to believe that the battery itself would have degraded that much in a year.
Sounds to me like the software could use some profiling to see if there is anything that uses CPU (and battery) unnecessarily. I’d say this should be particularly aggressive with the power saver on even if it makes the unit a bit less responsive when the screen is turned back on. And for navigation cues you can always just start anticipate when they will be shown a bit earlier so it does not even have to become visible to the user (except when turning the screen back on manually).
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