LTE with new Fenix 8 Pro

Hi all,

The Fenix 8 Pro is here, and it has LTE/satellite connectivity! Can we make use of the LTE connectivity as developers, similar to how it can be used with the FR945 LTE? I've never had an LTE watch, so I don't know how this all works.

I appreciate your help!

Thanks,
Lance

  • What do you mean? Like make web requests when your phone is not connected to the watch?

  • Yes. I think that was a feature the FR945LTE had, but I wasn't sure if it's possible with the Fenix 8 Pro. The sim doesn't seem to have LTE functionality for the F8Pro, but I just wanted to double check.

  • A web request cannot explicitly be made over either wifi or LTE. The 945lte is the same as the newer f8pro in this respect. A web request usually relies on the phone connection vie ble.

    However, what you will find is that if you perform a web request and there is already an existing wifi or LTE operation in progress, then the web request will use this.

    So for example, if you are out and about without your phone, but you watch is configured to use a wifi connection, you can start a wifi sync, and while this is active your web request will work and will use the wifi connection. This is not normally very useful since you a) need to have a wifi network configured which your watch can connect to, and b) you have to start the sync and then start your app and trigger the web request.

    Slightly more useful is that I believe this technique also works over LTE although, it may be harder to get the watch to start an LTE connection in a way that you can use it.

    In either case, these are kludgy and although I have got this to work, it's not user friendly. I did hear that you can trigger a wifi connection by instigating a bulk download in your app, but personally I have not tried this. Don't think this would help with the LTE connection though.

    What we really need is for Garmin to allow a web request which will explicitly trigger a wifi or LTE connection, but I'm not holding my breath. I guess there are issues over how this could be abused at the cost of high battery usage which they try to prevent.

  • Thanks gasteropod! One of my apps has the ability to use bulk download to download map images/weather radar via wifi. It seems to work via LTE in the sim for the 945LTE, but there's no way for me to know for sure without the actual watch.