x10^12
Chris Short confirmed [ when I had a NIB Garmin 5 that needed NA loaded I bought online ] that the Nav 5's and their batteries had known issues with discharging fairly quickly to near 50% even with an OEM battery replacement.The replacement Garmin/BMW battery that I bought in 2021-02-17 lasted about 2.5 years. It wasn't taking a charge last fall and I removed it from my Navigator V.
It is a Lithium Ion battery, great for taking charges and discharges just like my mobile phone and tablet and those have built-in batteries that are 5 years old with nearly full capacity from when they were new.
I really do not know who designed either the battery circuitry within the battery pack or the Navigator V circuitry, but it is the BIGGEST POS I have ever seen. Total garbage when it comes to battery longevity.
Hell my Garmin GPSMAP 60 CX runs on a couple of NiMH batteries that are over 5 years old (actually older) and I can get 10 hours of use out of a charge. And amazingly, the batteries take a charge.
Looks like I have to order a new battery.
So on either Nav 5 battery--If I charge it to 100%, take it off the charger and place it in it's carrying case, then store it in the garage or house [ doesn't matter relative heat ] in a week it's down to 50%. Then it takes another week or thereabouts to go to 25%. From 25% to "it won't start in the cradle without a little charge first" is another week at best.Yesterday, I did an update that took almost 3 hours using the correct Garmin cable. Prior to the update, I reinstalled the battery I bought in 2021 and the Nav 5 battery indicator showed a RED bar at the bottom of the Nav 5's voltage indicator. You would think if the battery accepted a charge, I'd have a full GREEN bar shown on the Nav 5's voltage indicator at the end of the update (yes I know the USB on the laptop is limited current-wise).
So then I charged it using my wall plug and Garmin cable for over 12 hours and all I got was a 75% GREEN bar on the Nav 5's voltage indicator. Of course battery voltage and battery capacity are two completely different things, so I turned on my Nav 5 and 40 minutes later I am down to 50%.
And in any case, the engineer that designed the unit must have graduated from Frunkies 'R Us Engineering School because when you shut a device down, there should be near zero or zero current consumption...if they knew what the F they were doing. I can shut down any other device (old mobile phones, old tablets, PC, digital camera) and it maintains battery voltage for months.
Also, Lithium batteries do not have the issues Ni-Cad batteries had from decades ago. They can be charged & discharged thousands of times (like my almost 5 year old Samsung mobile phone) and the battery still has like-new capacity.
We'll see, I'll cycle the battery a few times and HOPE.
We'll see, I'll cycle the battery a few times and HOPE.
After I had the NIB Nav 5 loaded with all of NA by Chris Short, I charged the battery to 100% [ btw, that battery had a date of 2012 ], took it out of the unit for storage [ as it's a spare ]. I then charged another Nav 5 battery I bought from Garmin a few years ago as a spare and took that out and into storage as well.
