Wait, are you saying that newer remotes do not have that problem?
A casual stroll thru this community will show that many people have a severe problem with battery life in their remotes. But there are also lots of people (myself included) that do not experience this problem. Is that due to some remotes being defective and others not, some Roku models being harder on remotes than others, or due to some other factor? I don't know.
I've only seen one external factor suggested that may affect this.
There is some evidence that one cause of battery drain for those with point-anywhere remotes that connect to the Roku via WiFi-direct (like the remotes for Streaming Stick models) can be use of a WiFi channel that is crowded by nearby routers using the same channel. It's been suggested that the remote has to work too hard constantly sorting through the information packets from other devices using the same channel such that it accelerates the battery drain. This is more likely to be a problem in the more heavily used 2.4 GHz wifi band than in the 5 GHz band.
If you have access to your router's setup, try configuring it to use a different WiFi channel to see if this helps the situation. If you are connecting in the crowded 2.4 GHz band, channels 1-11 are supported. Channels 1, 6, and 11 do not overlap each other and so give you the best chance at reducing congestion, so try each in succession, although depending on what channels your neighbors are using, other channels in the 1-11 range may work best. Also, reducing router bandwidth from 40 to 20 kHz may also reduce interference.
Note that optimum channel choice can be a moving target as neighbors bring new routers online in your vicinity, or reconfigure their routers to use different channels. I periodically use a wifi analyzer app on my smart phone that can show me which available wifi channels have the least congestion and I change the channel my router uses accordingly. I don't know if that explains my battery longevity (usually 3 months or more with fairly heavy use) but it's probably worth a try to see if it helps.
Please report back to let us know how you make out.
This is one of the other things we have tried. Even if this were a reason for some of the affected users, it would be a really poor software and/or hardware design. The WiFi remote of our Fire TV Stick does not have this issue. I've updated my original post to include a few things that have been suggested.
