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LTE Support

the-ninth

While implementing Wi-Fi support for web requests in my app, I also considered adding LTE support. From a technical perspective, this appears relatively straightforward, since the communication model is similar to Bluetooth. It seems that only additional handling of connectionInfo[:lte] would be required, plus in my case some work on the visual connectivity indicators.

However, I am unsure whether the effort is justified. As far as I can tell, Garmin has released only two LTE-enabled devices: the vívoactive 3 LTE and the Forerunner 945 LTE. Of these, only the Forerunner 945 LTE is capable of running my app.

Although the newer Fenix 8 Pro includes LTE-related features, it does not appear to provide general IP-based connectivity for CIQ apps.

So this is partly speculative, but I would be very interested in your perspective. Why did Garmin discontinue LTE after those two devices? Do you think LTE might return in future models with broader support for third-party apps?

I am also curious about the technical design decisions. With Wi-Fi, the emphasis seems to be on battery conservation through a dedicated sync mode. In contrast, LTE appears to have been designed as an always-on connection. What was the reasoning behind that approach?

  • in reply to dpawlyk

    Don’t disagree, just pointing out that it is the only watch that actually exposed LTE for CIQ apps.  I am not even sure if Verizon even allows them on the network anymore.  So even if someone still has one, it may not even work beyond BT.

  • in reply to sabeard

    Mentioning it was useful. It supports my point (so, thanks). My comment was about what it suggested about Garmin’s LTE plans.

  • in reply to dpawlyk

    Out of curiosity, I tested the app in the VA3 Music LTE and FR945 LTE simulator.

    On the VA3 Music LTE, the connection appears to be permanently available. This is reflected both in the original announcement and in how LTE is presented in the simulator:

    https://www.garmin.com/en-US/blog/developer/adapting-connect-iq-app-to-lte/

    With the FR945 LTE, however, it seems Garmin limited LTE to the sync mode. As I mentioned in my original post, this approach actually makes more sense to me.

    It appears that, from a Connect IQ perspective, LTE support has gradually been reduced. On the VA3 Music LTE, it was available as a regular, always-on connection. On the FR945 LTE, it seems to have been limited to the sync mechanism. And on the Fenix 8 Pro, LTE is not available to Connect IQ apps at all.

  • in reply to the-ninth

    Your observations about the VA3MLTE are correct.  That device did not actually have a WIFI radio so the LTE was the only option for a higher speed connection to sync the music.  The benefit was if LTE was turned on, it was always available to CIQ apps.

    With regards to the FR945 I got a chance to play with one and from what I could tell, the LTE was not available at all.  Doing a has check on the connection info only returned BLE and WiFi status.  To CIQ it was like LTE did not exist.  Similar to the F8Pro. 

  • in reply to sabeard
    sabeard said:
    Doing a has check on the connection info only returned BLE and WiFi status.  To CIQ it was like LTE did not exist.  Similar to the F8Pro. 

    Did you try implementing LTE communication using Communications.startSync() together with a SyncDelegate? From what I can see in the simulator, this appears to be the way to establish an LTE connection on the FR745.

  • in reply to the-ninth

    With the va3m you can only access lte with Verison and with the 945lte, it's different cell providers based on country.  Last I heard, there were none in the UK, even if you wanted to use lte.

  • in reply to the-ninth

    I did not try to use the Communications.startSync() method.  From what I can tell there is not way to actually specify to use LTE with that method.  It just does not use BT.  I went by the info in the DeviceSettings.connectionInfo.  Based on the definition (listed below) the fact the :lte does not exist indicates the LTE radio is not exposed to CIQ.  In my testing the dictionary only returned bluetooth and wifi in my on device logging.  The simulator returned all 3.

     

    Returns:

    • Lang.Dictionary — 

      A Dictionary that contains the state of each available connection. The keys, :bluetooth, :wifi, and :lte indicate the connection type. If a key is not present then it means that connection type is not available to the device. The values are a ConnectionInfo object, which contain the state of the connection type.

  • in reply to the-ninth

    One reason to release something "sooner" is to get statistics for what devices it's installed on.

    It's possible there aren't enough LTE device users to be concerned about.

    For my app. I was surprised that most of the users (by far) were running it on watches.

    I had a couple of people interested in my app work on older/memory-constrained devices but figured out it was too much work to do that.

    (Nothing is going to be perfect.)