Garmin Pilot v. 8.5 - BATTERY VAMPIRE???

I have been using Garmin Pilot since the summer and love it.
I bought a brand new iPad Air 2 in August just to run Garmin Pilot.
My battery life has been excellent; anywhere from 5 to 7 days on a full charge.

However,....

Two weeks ago I upgraded to Garmin Pilot v. 8.5 and IMMEDIATELY noticed that my battery was being sucked dry. after putting my iPad away with a full charge, I found it completely dead after just two days;... of NON-USE. I am now getting only 1 to 2 days between charges.

I finally checked my battery monitor, and my iPad tells me what I'd suspected: over the past 7 days, Garmin Pilot has used 90% of my battery life... PERFORMING BACKGROUND ACTIVITIES.

I have changed no settings in Garmin Pilot, and can find no options to stop background activities.

Anybody know what's going on?

[PS: I love the new Weight & Balance feature. However, Garmin added it right after I created a custom Excel spreadsheet for my particular rental 172N and ported it over to my iPad...]

I have it on my Iphone 5 (primarily to have with me as a back-up) and recently updated it to 8.5.1.
I have had no indication of any battery usage during the past 2 weeks that I haven't used the app at all.

No issues on IPhone 6S Plus

I have it on my iPad mini and iPhone 7 and not issues at all.

It does run in the background and will drain the battery moreso than if it isn't running at all. Foreflight does the same thing, so this isn't something unique to Garmin Pilot. It's really a matter of how the app is designed and if it utilizes iOS' background execution or not.

Just kill it when you're not using it and it will be fine.

Try This

You may want to take a look at the counters to see what specifically is draining the battery:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201264

You may need to clear the counters first and wait a day or two to see what is doing it. You would be surprised what other apps have had issues in the past. I don't use it that much (honestly) but the Domino's Pizza app was a great example in the past on mine of one that was constantly looking for the location in the background as if I was going to order pizza 24 hours a day

Jeff,

That's exactly what I did, and it told me that Garmin Pilot was using 90% of my battery in Background Tasks. I have had to charge my battery from completely dead THREE TIMES in the last week, and have only used it a total of about 2 hours; the rest of the time it's been in sleep mode.

The previous version of Garmin Pilot never drained my battery like this.

Again, I have not changed ANYTHING on my iPad in the last 2 months EXCEPT loading GP ver. 8.5, and all of a sudden a typical charge went from lasting 5 to 7 days to lasting just 1 or 2.

I noticed the same thing with my phone and WingX. If I'm not flying or planing a flight then I have to be sure and shut it down otherwise it will drain the battery.

There are three parts to an app's battery usage.

1. is the app enabled to run in the background (this is controlled from iOS Settings - General - Background App Refresh) this isn't likely relevant in this particular case
2. location services (the Garmin Pilot app only supports 'always' and 'never')
3. has the app been closed completely (this is done from the iOS task list via double click of the home button)

If you do not explicitly close most navigation apps and they are allowed access to location services, they keep running and using the GPS.

You mentioned:

Pool Shark said:

I have not changed ANYTHING on my iPad in the last 2 months EXCEPT loading GP ver. 8.5

Click to expand...

Has the version of iOS updated?

ChiefPilot said:

It does run in the background and will drain the battery moreso than if it isn't running at all. Foreflight does the same thing, so this isn't something unique to Garmin Pilot. It's really a matter of how the app is designed and if it utilizes iOS' background execution or not.

Just kill it when you're not using it and it will be fine.

Click to expand...

Don't know about the garmin, but FF has a setting for "allow sleep mode." This tells it whether or not to run when the ipad is in sleep mode (e.g. cover closed). If allowed to run in sleep mode, it will drain the battery even though you're not using it. I like this for when flying, so just kill the FF app when not using to avoid battery drain.

EDIT: I believe this setting is for preventing the ipad from going into sleep mode while running. However, this may still control it's sleep usage, but not sure.

Larry

lr172 said:

EDIT: I believe this setting is for preventing the ipad from going into sleep mode while running. However, this may still control it's sleep usage, but not sure.

Click to expand...

Different thing. I'd guess that's just setting the idleTimerDisabled flag on the shared application object which prevents the display from turning off. I was thinking more about background execution of location services in particular.

One additional thing to look at, short of killing the app between uses: Go into settings, then general->background app refresh. Turn this off for Pilot, if it's listed there (it is listed for FF, which I turn off - this helps battery life).

Glen,

No, my last operating system upgrade was to iOS 10 in October.

My battery life issue started only two weeks ago; IMMEDIATELY after I upgraded to Garmin Pilot 8.5.

I guess I'll just have to expressly shut GP down EVERY time I'm done using it.

I really like Garmin pilot, but it has been a battery hog on my iPhone for some time.

i regularly check the phone and kill unused apps (double click the home button, then swipe up on anything you want turned off).

If i inadvertently leave the Pilot app running, in the background, it will drain my iPhone 6 in less than half a day.

The iPad hasn't been an issue, and i typically fire the app up first thing in the morning if I have a trip to file and brief, then use it frequenly but not continuously in flight. I've flown a lot of four hour legs after that and haven't killed the ipad yet.

I'm not sure why some are having issues with battery drain and some are not.
If I were in your shoes and were having issues with battery draining after an upgrade, I would delete it and re-install the full version after completely removing it. It may be a pain to re-download all the databases but there could be some issues that are not easily seen due to the upgrade in software and many times that goes away with re-installing .

Worth a try...