Bluetooth won't sync when no 3g or wifi - mwa?

✔︎ Connect to phone; ✔︎ Interact with GCM app; ✘ Garmin Connect database r/w access

If there is no pathway to the cloud-based Garmin Connect service when you have no Internet connectivity, then data captured by your watch cannot be uploaded (which the Garmin Connect Mobile app can then retrieve from the cloud for your review), and any changes to your profile information in your Garmin Connect account cannot be downloaded and then updated on your watch. That's effectively what syncing is.

The Bluetooth connection between your fēnix‑3‑HR and your phone will still work in the absence of Internet connectivity, but the Garmin Connect Mobile app itself cannot function fully in the circumstances. Notifications from your handset, such as when an SMS message is delivered to it over the cellular mobile network (without using packet data) and received, can still be transmitted to your watch over Bluetooth.

Just now, I experimented on my iPad and disabled both Wi-Fi and cellular mobile network connectivity on it to remove Internet connectivity, and the Calendar widget on my Forerunner‑235 – which, unlike notifications, cannot function unless the watch is connected to the GCM app itself (and not just the Apple device/iOS) – continued to work and showed my appointments for the rest of the day. I even created a couple of test appointments in my iPad's Calendar app locally (since, without Internet connectivity, it cannot sync them to my calendars ‘in the cloud’), and the Calendar widget picked them up shortly afterwards, so syncing over Bluetooth with the app occurs in fact.

Well thats interesting.

All I was trying to do was update my step count via bluetooth. But what you say implies that the watch never updates these things via bluetooth to the app - but uses bluetooth to obtain an internet connection from my iPhone then updates Garmin central - which then updates my local app.

Do fitbit and others operate in the same way or is this a Garmin thing I wonder?

Yikes.

The TomTom MySports Connect apps (for iOS and Android) operate in much the same way.

There is essentially no service that can be obtained by the user from cloud-based fitness (and/or sports activity) data storage-analysis-reporting platforms – such as Garmin Connect and TomTom MySports – in the absence of Internet connectivity. The mobile apps are not the primary repositories of the individual users' data, or even (from the users' perspective) local data caches to support ‘offline’ analysis and reporting functions for that matter.

All I was trying to do was update my step count via bluetooth.

If you don't care for updating the Garmin Connect database ‘in the cloud’ first and foremost, the Activity Tracking widget on your watch should tell you your step count anyway, and does not require syncing with the Garmin Connect Mobile app on your phone to give you the information.

I understand you may prefer to view the information on your phone in the app, but that's kinda irrelevant to the design. Your choice is between using either local information on the watch, or the persistent single-source-of-truth in the cloud; the app is just the conduit between the two.

Thanks ASmugDill - useful to know and makes sense I suppose when you think about it.

Cheers.