Hi F-Phil
what kind of battery did you use to replace the original battery in the Forerunner 305. The Garmin 361-00026-00 seems not available, at least a web search did not come up with any results.
I have seen somewhere else (http://ctorunner.googlepages.com/dismantleforerunner205) mentioned that the Forerunner 305 battery look like an IPod (generation 4) battery. But so far I have not found any information about the size of these batteries, i.e. if they match the approx. 40mm x 35mm x 5.5mm of the original battery.
Cheers, Stephan
It's not always the battery, I assumed it was and opend mine up to check it out but the battery was OK.
Problem was the unit wouldn't start without pressing mode + reset followed by the power button.
I lifted the internal watch contact strips to put a better connection between the two halves but that made no difference.
I found that I couldn't delete all the history and the watch had recently turned itself off on a run after giving a low battery warning => the history was corrupted and caused the watch grief.
The only way I found to delete the history was to load a v 2.80 (or earlier) version of the watch s/w (current 2.90 doesn't delete history and there is no tool to do it!)
Fortunately I had a copy of v2.80 but the old version is not now on the Garmin site (that I saw).
Moral of the story, don't run your battery low for two reasons, Li-ion batteries lose capacity if you run them below ~30% and also if the watch "low battery" turns off while recording it can corrupt the history and really upset the watch.
At least I now know how to open the watch and have found plenty of possible small mobile phone batteries that will fit (Samsung have a few possibilities). The ABSOLUTE max size of a replacement battery is 36mm H x 43 mm wide x 5.8 mm deep.
If you go 43 mm wide you have to trim a couple of internal plastic ridges in the case.
Good luck and try starting after pressing mode + reset if it won't fire up then try and delete all the history.
Also DON'T run the battery low if you want it to last, Li-ion work opposite to NiCad and NiMH which should be fully discharged before recharge. You try and keep them above 50%.
Steve
Had the same "could not power up problem" and suspected the the battery. Called Garman and there service person directed me to try holding the mode button and the power button down at the same time for seven seconds. It still did not power up. I then asked about the availability of batteries and was told they were not available. The service person then gave me the option to send the unit back and for $79 they would send out a rebuilt unit with a 30 day warranty. Thinking that was not a satisfactory option, I then consulted the internet and ran across the "hold the mode and reset buttons down at the same time for 5 seconds followed by the power button. Just like magic the watch then came on. In discuss I called Garman back and informed them of how unhappy I was with my service experience. The service person I reached this time first apologized for my previous experience and then to my surprise then indicated there are actually 4 resets that may
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I used the battery from a sumsung hue cell phone.
http://www.jimandkatrin.com/codeblog/2009/08/forerunner-305-battery-replacement.html
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