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[SOLVED] Android and Garmin Connect Mobile failing to synch F3 after V 4.3 FW update

Former Member over 9 years ago

I've spent the whole morning, no kidding at least 4 hours, trying to understand why, after the hard reset following 4.3 FW upgrade of my F3, my phone was unable to register my F3 on Garmin Connect Mobile.

With the Hard Reset (due to the restarting loop) all data was lost so I first had to go through the main settings and the NAV points. Luckily all data depending on Garmin Connect are stored online and retransferred to the F3 via Garmin Express.
However, since the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth settings were also lost, I basically had to start ALL the configuration from scratch and I got jammed, literally, at trying to understand WHY the F3 was no longer visible on the GCM phone app (Samsung S3 Neo).

My ordeal is here.

There is definitely a bug in GCM right now and your phone might very often lose the WI-FI connection as you try to fix the issue. Without connection to GC, GCM can't operate so keep that in mind. It's not a problem of routers, wireless or internet connection (youtube all the way in the background here). So GCM messes up both the BT and WiFi.

If you find the authentication FAILS on GC it's because of this connection problem caused by either GCM or 4.3 or both (but I think it's just GCM that needs an update).

Unpair F3 with phone.
Clear data (all data) on GCM... you might as well uninstall and reinstall it but clear the data first.
Turn off and on both the cell phone and the F3 (keep BT off for the moment).
Check your Garmin Connect Dashboard. In my case, the watch was not being loaded in the widget and this rang the bell.
Unregister your F3 from your Garmin Account.
Turn on the F3 and connect it to Garmin Express. Follow the procedure to re-register the watch to your account. Garmin will mail you congratulating for your new Fenix 3 (worst purchase of the year needs an extra congratulation)
Turn on BT on phone and F3.
Pair F3 with phone.
Go to GCM on your phone and you should see the F3 in the devices list, not connected (yet), this comes from Garmin COnnect itself. Check GC dashboard and you'll see the brand new F3 on your devices widget.
Sync the F3 on the phone, this means set the F3 to PAIR again.
At this point GCM will crash and they will ask you if you want to send a report. Do it. Tell them how much you love them.

You will not believe it but when you open GCM again you'll see the F3 is now paired.
Head for the settings.
Turn off and on both the phone and the F3.

And it's done... at least here and in my case.

Summary:
If you see in the GCM synch details Requesting device identification file failed it's because GCM has messed its state on GC (proceed to remove F3 from your devices and reinstate it via Garmin Express).
If you see instead OTHER_FATAL it's because your CONNECTED F3 also needs to be in PAIRING mode (it's the same you do when you pair it with the phone, set it in pairing mode when the GCM is synching).

0 Former Member over 9 years ago

Following up

Tests on notifications show that missed calls are correctly forwarded to the F3 but social (hangouts, whatsapp and FB Messenger) are no longer working with 4.3.
Will disable them on GCM and re-enable to see if this helps.

Guys when Garmin releases 4.4 you'd better have the patch ready for GCM or it will be a very messy war on the forums. I've been 9 hours straight experimenting at the PC, installing and uninstalling and I'll keep doing it just to help you out whereas I could roll back to 4.2 and have everything work as before.

Will update you on the results.

0 Vovan- over 9 years ago

Fenix 3 fw 4.3 our new problem

Hi,
Thank you for the investigation!
I have received new fw 4.3 after ordinary bluetooth sync.
And problems occurred.
Now garmin have removed 4.3 from update page:
https://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=7623

Is there a way to downgrade to 4.2?
Garmin software developers have stolen my day...

0 Former Member over 9 years ago

Following up

GCM removal of FB Messenger and Whatsapp performed.
Apps were re-added and now messages are being forwarded correctly with both.
GPS soaking performed and ready for battle tomorrow.

I concluded this day of nightmare with the successful restore of my entire configuration, solving the BT-WIFI-GCM-GC issues caused by Fenix3 FW 4.3 and I hope this will help users and DEVs with FW 4.4.

There is definitely a GCM mismatch in uses of BT and WIFI, problems with presumed timeout when downloading F3 credentials through GC onto GCM.
IQ limits bugged and turning off F3 didn't release the unused slot but removing the activity did.
Weather IQ not working despite synch operational.

@Vovan: Formatting the unit (slow format) and uploading the 4.2 files, if you saved them, should do the trick, however, since you are there, I recommend you press on with 4.3.
Garmin will most certainly release a hotfix very soon and you'd be going through a lot of work just to lose the 4.2 anyway.

By all accounts 4.3 is stable and BT is a minor (solvable and SOLVED) issue. Core functions are working and new file system is essential for BaseCamp to work.

0 Former Member over 9 years ago

Confirmed S3 Neo loses WI-FI connection when email arrives while BT connection to F3 is active (mail notifications activated on F3 but they don't make it in time to get pushed to the F3).
Tenth time in a row -> Router at 3m distance is reported as out of range.

This issue is something I can't solve. :D

0 Former Member over 9 years ago

No luck with the Email notifications.
I removed the feature from GCM, then added it again and turned it on to send to F3.

I've received 5 mails so far but none were notified to the F3; however, GCM is no longer breaking the phone's wi-fi connection to the router... it's a good thing.

0 Former Member over 9 years ago

I have performed several checks this morning with different features that worked and all of a sudden stopped working.

Cycles of install, clear cache, uninstall, reboot that brought no difference and then all of a sudden the BT features started working again without me touching anything.

At present time, the weather widget is not working but all notifications are.

This morning the weather widget was working but email notifications weren't. Mid morning mails on the phone DISCONNECTED its wireless (and were not pushed to the F3).

GCM crashed (feedback sent) as soon as phone was restarted and that's how I got here. I already know that if I hook to the GPS the weather will start working again... but surely someone who's a lesser geek than I am would have gone crazy at this time (instead, in case you haven't noticed, I'm having lots of fun with this... and I'm also using the various subscriptions to check on the F3 notifications... BWHAHAHAHAHAHHHHAHAHAHAHA :cool: )

0 Former Member over 9 years ago

Very well... went out for a short walk and as soon as GPS was engaged, the notifications stopped coming on the F3.
Now back at the desk... the weather widget is working and notifications aren't working anymore.

Performed Sync, weather no longer available and all notifications active again: the only explanation is that GCM is not transferring last known location from the phone but that doesn't acount for the inability to make notifications and weather work at the same time.

0 martinleroux over 9 years ago

If you see in the GCM synch details Requesting device identification file failed it's because GCM has messed its state on GC (proceed to remove F3 from your devices and reinstate it via Garmin Express).

Alas I got that error message and re-registering the F3 didn't help.

0 Vovan- over 9 years ago

Requesting device identification file failed

After 4.3 update and with 4.4 update now i always get "Requesting device identification file failed" error message when trying to pair Fenix 3 to garmin connect mobile application.
If i ignore that message, device will though be connected to the garmin connect mobile,
but it will never auto sync when connecting to garmin connect mobile again and it won't send me notifications until i call manual bluetooth sync (it also displays 0 subscribers in garmin connect mobile notification settings, after manual sync it will change to 1 subscriber)
Unregistering device from garmin account does not help, reinstalling garmin connect mobile does not help too.

Does anyone have the same issue? Maybe there is a way to mitigate that issue?

0 Former Member over 9 years ago

When you are jammed at the device setup screen in GCM instead of hitting PAIR on the F3, if you're having the dreaded Requesting device identification file failed error, try hitting SYNC. The download should happen instantaneously.