Ticket Created
over 1 year ago

TREES-6206

Fenix 7 series - GPS track recording is stopped during activity when a widget is displayed

The following scenario currupts the GPS track recording of any activity and have to be fixed in my opinion with higher priority on the Fenix 7 series devices.

During an activity with GPS track recording it is possible to display the watch face and switch to any widget on your device. This behavious was also possible on other devices like the Fenix 6 series. If you do that and display a widget it seems that the GPS is turned off and the track recording stops.

That means checking the solar intensity, messages or using widget like MagicDust (that double the battery life during an activity) doesn't work anymore. That leads automatically to a false track recording.

After displaying the active activity screen again the GPS is activated again and starts recording. The recorded activity includes all information except the missing GPS track points that are not recorded while the widget was displayed (heartrate, temp, altitude...).

Repro:

- Start an activit that supports GPS track recording

- select the map view

- Toggle to the watch face and select a widget

-walk some meters to a different location to check the missing track points later in the recorded track

- toggle back to the activity screen, the GPS fix is displayed

- the map view is updated and displays a straight line to the position where you selected the widget

Device info: Fenix 7X sapphire solar, FW 7.20, tested GPS modes (GPS only and all systems)

It would be nice if any other user can verify this issue, because it may also be related to my Fenix 7x device, thanks for your help.

  • Some downsides of this fix:

    - we need to request permission for accessing location. That may sound intrusive to many users, especially in apps where it is totally not needed
    - the battery consumption will be higher
    - some widgets are really using almost the limit of memory. Adding just a few lines of code may break them on older devices. Therefore I can consider the alternative of creating device-specific code, but that will mean more maintenance work in the future.
  • OK did a new test with the fixed fixed version, much better. Still when switching back from the widget to the activity introduces track errors probably because of a short signal loss.

  • The code snippet have to be added in the widget main view. Just for information, maybe I've forgotten to add this in the description.

    thanks for verifying the solution, great!

  • But who is going to tell the thousands of other developers that their apps aren't really compatible with the new Garmin devices? Should be Garmins job but I don't see them doing anything.

  • I am the one who gave the "fixed app", where the solution did not work. The reason was that I put the location code in the wrong view, after fixing that it worked fine. I can also confirm that the fix works for the FR955.