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Fenix 8 data field

enki42ea
2 months ago

Why is the data field memory limit on the Fenix 8 half the size of the Fenix 7 / Epix 2? Hoping that is a bug cause that makes it more like the Fenix 6

  • 2 months ago in reply to enki42ea
    enki42ea said:
    Plus I guess I used it as a correlation to the level of computing power of the watch in the hopes that the Fenix 8 cpu was more powerful

    Others have speculated that it isn't tho. And like I said, actual device RAM size has been decreasing from Fenix 5 to Fenix 6 to Fenix 7, whether we like it or not.

  • 2 months ago in reply to Kyle.ConnectIQ

    This is like the more-or-less only reason some people might consider upgrading their watch to the next generation (though we'll need to see if the same will come to the next forerunners...)

  • 2 months ago

    I think it 's a good move 4 fields with 128k, in fact I could live with even stricter mem limit,  8 datafields at 64k would be awesome 

  • 2 months ago in reply to peterdedecker
    peterdedecker said:
    I think it 's a good move 4 fields with 128k, in fact I could live with even stricter mem limit,  8 datafields at 64k would be awesome 

    With the new CIQ data field limit of 4, I think there's a case to be made that the 10 custom data page limit for "high end" devices should be increased too. If each of those CIQ fields is a full screen field, then the CIQ fields really start to eat into your total data page limit. (Reminds me of the old situation where some devices only had 2 or 4 custom pages total. I think even Vivoactive 5 only has 4 pages today.)

    If you could have 8 CIQ data fields, and many of them were fullscreen fields, then 10 custom data pages wouldn't be nearly enough.

    (Yeah, I realize it's unlikely that all 8 of your CIQ fields would be full screen fields. Then again, the Garmin support page for adding CIQ data fields tells the user to set a 1-field layout, which implies that they think most of the popular fields only work in full screen.)

  • 2 months ago in reply to flocsy🤠
    flocsy🤠 said:
    This is like the more-or-less only reason some people might consider upgrading their watch to the next generation (though we'll need to see if the same will come to the next forerunners...)

    To be real, this is only a tiny handful of users. Reviewers never talk about the CIQ data field limit and it's not on the spec sheet.

  • 2 months ago in reply to FlowState
    FlowState said:
    many of them were fullscreen fields,

    Isn’t the main reason full screen data fields were developed due to the fact the limit was at 2....

    For me this was a major factor.

  • 2 months ago in reply to peterdedecker
    peterdedecker said:
    Isn’t the main reason full screen data fields were developed due to the fact the limit was at 2....

    Yeah, that’s true. If there had never been a limit (or the limit had been too high to be a practical barrier), then it’s possible many of the popular full screen fields never would’ve been made (or would’ve been made as “normal fields” instead.) I guess the idea is that users wouldn’t want to “waste” 1 of their 2 slots on a field that “only” displays one thing. But then again, does it really help the user to possibly display a bunch of other things they don’t care about alongside the one thing they do care about, or to display stuff that could also be displayed by native fields?

    In other words, if I download a CIQ field which only displays 1 unique field related to its one unique function, and that CIQ field comes in full-screen mode where it also displays 3 additional generic fields that are available natively, how would that be any different from having the field in non full-screen mode alongside 3 native fields? And how would having a limit of 2 CIQ fields, 4, or 8 make a difference here?

    Or maybe you’re saying that a single CIQ field might display 4 unique things (unavailable natively), but if the CIQ field limit were higher, then the user could just download 4 separate fields. As a matter of fact, I do have a field that has 2 versions — non-full screen mode and full-screen mode (with 6 field layouts) — for this very reason. Some users liked the functionality of the non-full screen mode data field (which displays unique 1 value), so they wanted to be able to display 6-12 unique values by installing the full-screen mode data field 1-2 times. I wonder how common it is that a full-screen data field’s functionality (with unique fields) can really be broken down into individual pieces though.

    There’s also the genre of full screen CIQ fields which display more simultaneous on-screen fields than is possible natively. In the past, a 6-field CIQ data field was great for devices which only displayed 4 fields max. Now that most devices support at least 6 fields, an 8-field CIQ data field serves a similar purpose. (Some devices support 8 fields, but not all). Dozen Run was one of the most popular CIQ data fields (it displays a dozen fields), and I’m pretty sure people like it because they can see a dozen things at once, not because there’s a CIQ field limit of 2. 

    A bit rarer are the full screen fields which display completely different information than you might normally see natively, like a lap history field (watches finally have this natively, but only for on-device intervals or the Track Run activity.)

  • 2 months ago in reply to FlowState

    Or to put it differently: do you have a concrete example of a CIQ field that you wouldn't have made (or would've made differently), if the limit was 8 fields?

    For me it would have to be AppBuilder 5+ (the full-screen, 6-field version of AppBuilder 5).

    If users could just install 8 CIQ fields, then instead of installing AppBuilder 5+ to give them 6 calculated fields, they could just install AppBuilder 5 six times.

    But then again:

    - 6 out of 8 slots is a lot compared to 1 out of 8 slots

    - this use case would require having 6 clones of AppBuilder 5 in the store (I know you hate clones)

    - AppBuilder 5+ allows 12 calculated fields total (6 fields for each instance of the app) even with the 2 CIQ field limit, so a 4 field or even 8 field limit doesn't come close to replicating this use case with single-value fields.

    Another example for me is Lap+: I combined a fairly generic 6-field full-screen field with a lap history viewer (basically 2 apps in one) because I reasoned that users wouldn't want to waste 1 whole slot "just" for a lap history viewer. At the time, most watches only allowed up to 4 fields per page, so the 6-field screen had additional utility beyond a normal custom data screen.

    The 6-field full-screen half of the app does have some unique functionality, but I would've released it as a completely separate data field if it wasn't for the 2 field limit.

  • 2 months ago in reply to FlowState
    FlowState said:
    Or to put it differently: do you have a concrete example of a CIQ field that you wouldn't have made (or would've made differently), if the limit was 8 fields?

    Wouldn't have made "all in one"

    Possibly my pacer fields would also be in another form