I am just curious how other people see this. For me personally, while writing little apps and widgets in Monkey C is kind of fun, the large number of traditional garmin features that have been removed from the fenix 3 and all connect iq devices compared to earlier garmin devices has been a major disappointment and effectively has rendered the devices almost unusable for hiking. On short hikes i would oftentimes use my fenix 2 and keep my oregon 600 in my backpack only to be used in case of serious need. Since I got the fenix 3 and sold my fenix 2 on ebay i found myself reverting back to the oregon exclusively when hiking and only using the fenix 3 for running or as a step counter.
The features I miss most on the f3 (and generally on the new generation of Connect IQ watches) are:
- can't show the gps accuracy in meters as i've been used to for garmin hiking devices of the past 7-8 years
- has a barometer widget that can't switch between baro pressure and atmospheric pressure which would be really useful when stationary for weather prediction as past devices used to have. i can't correct this via connect iq apps because connect iq won't let me take sample pressure at predefined intervals (i.e. 15 mins) to build my chart while the app is offline.
- no longer has a satellite view as i've been used to for garmin hiking devices of the past 7-8 years
- no longer has the ability to import tracks or waypoints automatically from basecamp or basecamp mobile leading to cumbersome ways to import (to currently import a track i have to export it out of basecamp, import into openrunner.com, export out of openrunner, then import to fenix 3!!).
- no longer has a way to properly project a waypoint (the recently made garmin waypoint project app is hilarious as i mentioned in my review of it, to project a waypoint 12km away you would have to press the UP button on the f3 one thousand two hundred times!?!)
- no longer has a way to sort waypoints alphabetically or by distance or search for a waypoint
- no longer has the ability to include waypoint details
- no longer has the stopped time / moving time / moving average speed datafields which i found very useful when hiking.
I saw one of the Garmin moderators mentioning in one forum post that the new 12 inch macbook is also a step back performance-wise in order to facilitate other features and that this is the case here as well, we will have all these great ConnectIQ apps that would make the devices of old look irrelevant but it just takes a bit of time to perfect the API (he mentioned a Connect IQ app that allows the owner to open his garage door with the watch). I find this to be a false analogy, in the case of the 12 inch macbook Apple had an objective reason, in order to make it very slim and fanless they had to drop some hardware components that impact speed/connectivity. In the case of the connect iq watches there was no such hardware dependency.
Since Connect IQ cannot in its current form provide the above features, the right approach Garmin should have employed in my view was to provide all the above as native non-connect IQ features so that I can use my connect iq watch at least as well as I used earlier devices and gradually, as Connect IQ matures, the additional third party apps would come as well. While opening my garage door with the watch could be kind of cool, if given the choice to use the f3 for hiking vs. using it as a garage door opener I'd always choose the first :)
What do other members think? Do you see any valid reasons for Garmin dropping these features? Do you miss them? Would you like to see them come back as native apps?
