Weather, Location and Garmin Connect

BTW what would be even better would be for Connect to post a notification when it wants to access location to do weather updates instead of only on failure, and to retry on some accelerated (but reasonable) schedule on said failure if the notification is still present (not dismissed.)

Example:

1. Post notification and make the attempt.

2. If it fails do an exponential back-off on the following sequence: 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, 4 minutes, 8 minutes - give up.

3. If location grab during any of those succeeds drop the notification and proceed.

This is easily tested for in the service, and it would mean that if someone wants to either manually turn on location when prompted for a weather update, or programmatically do so (e.g. with Tasker), they can without leaving it on all the time.  As it is the "complain if you can't get it" model doesn't address retries at all and is inefficient at best, and leads to lack of functionality at worst in an attempt to force people to give up their location on an "always-on" basis -- especially since Connect only needs the low-precision location to get weather (you certainly don't need to be accurate to within 10' or so to obtain a weather forecast!)  It also covers the "drowse" mode modern Android versions use where they only wake up on a "maintenance window" in pursuit of better battery life if the screen is off for an extended period of time (unless an app has exempted itself, which you really don't want to do for power management reasons); a simple "one off" retry will often fail if the phone is in drowse for that reason.

I have learned a fair bit more from experimenting with my Fenix 6x.

Specifically, if its weather information is STALE (says it needs it from the phone) and I turn off and on bluetooth while location is on, Connect will, given some sort of interval, refresh it.

What I've yet to figure out is the exact delay necessary or if one (rather than two) cycles of Bluetooth is sufficient.  It appears two are required.  This also implies that the watch is the one that requests the refresh and Connect either has current data or not, and that those two things may not be interconnected.

That's a crap design if so.

What I'd like to recommend -- perhaps someone at Garmin will read this and pick up on it, although I've sent an earlier suggestion to their suggestion box as well:

1. On a bluetooth disconnect/reconnect, which Connect can see and is notified of directly due to the state change, refresh the weather data.  This is logical all the way around; if the watch was not connected and becomes connected it makes sense to refresh weather status anyway since there is decent odds the device and/or phone have moved (and any cached weather data may be out of date.)

2. If the weather data in Connect becomes out of date by more than four hours, which is the interval the watch uses for whether heat acclimation data is valid, attempt to refresh it and if it fails post a notification (as is done now, but apparently only once a day.)  If location is turned on drop the notification (this is done now) and immediately refresh the weather data (unknown if it does that now)

This will permit the following:

1. The phone (e.g. using Tasker) can detect an out-of-date weather cache condition and cycle location to get Connect to refresh it.

2. If it detects that condition it can also cycle bluetooth off and back on which, if the watch is in range, will cause it to re-request weather data and sync itself.  If the watch is not in range or is turned off it will automatically resync when it returns to being in range.

That should pretty-much do it.

I have the same issue in that each day the request for location as described above occurs when my Fenix 6 is connected to Connect app on my android phone. When connecting to Connect app on Apple phone no issues.

I raised this issue over 3 month's ago and Garmin support have not linked to this or other forum posts highlighting the issue with Android permissions.

Garmin support have been slow to respond and fail to provide any updates unless I follow up with them - disappointing customer service.

I was a Garmin advocate but my perception of Garmin products has dropped significantly to the point that I am now investigating other competitor brands. Disappointed as the price paid for my Fenix 6 pro I expected better quality and better customer service.

Reality check - anything digital these days "needs" your geo-location, so switching to a competitor won't matter (unless that competitor's leadership commits to privacy, and I've only found 1 vendor who actually has smart devices with kill switches*)

This obsession with our geolocation is justified under the corporate-speak term "CEE" (Customer Experience & Engagement), where we are told that our digital or online experiences are enhanced by things like geolocation.  Pfft.  CEE is really a productization of our private data as a commidity.  So our location is collected, sold to 3rd party brokers who then sell it to advertisers who then sell it to other vendors.  We all know the end result of this as targetted advertising.  And isn't it better to get ads that are hyperlocal?  Example: I don't want to see ads for cars being sold in another state.  Plus, you get accurate weather forecasts to boot!  Why complain?

I'm not advocating this invasion of our privacy that but am saying it's the sad reality.

* kill switches are a signal to me that the vendor is serious about my privacy.  These switches are usually hardware and literally disable the devices electronic component, such as its sat antenna that's used for GPS.

Also a privacy paranoid here. Besides that, GPS signals generally do not reach inside my house when I've just woken up (and I'd like to see what the weather is supposed to be today so I can dress appropriately). And no, wifi is usually also turned off over night as well as not used for location information due to being a privacy paranoid... (I have the "stealth" edition of the relevant watch for a reason.)

So it would have been nice if the Garmin app used either the last know GPS location or a default location to get its weather, if GPS is turned off...

Anyhow, there are a couple of GPS spoofing apps available (at least for Android), that can be made to work with a little bit of twiddling (legitimate use for mobile software developers, after all). They can return some arbitrary (fake) location and some even simulate moving around. Quick, because no fix on satellites needed. And they return said fake location even indoors, because no fix on satellites needed. 

Modern problems require modern solutions.

Shoot, one CAN actually set a fixed location on the Connect app these days: support.garmin.com/.../