Vivoactive 6 Simulator problems

Basically, they are forcing you to use touch pretty much everywhere. You cannot generally (in some cases you can), use the top right button to select anything anymore.

As annoying as this sounds, Vivoactive 3 only has one button and it's a lot like this.

- short press of the button from the watchface opens the activity list

- short press of the button does *not* select anything, not even an activity. (you have to tap on an activity to open it.)

- within an activity, short press of the button starts/stops the timer (or cancels the save/discard prompt after you tap Done while the timer is paused)

-- I noticed that when you open an activity, the watch displays a little hint: "press button to start/stop". This goes back to how Garmin probably thinks there's nothing intuitive about using buttons for anything

- everywhere else, short press of the button returns to the watchface

- long press of the button opens the controls menu

- long press of the screen opens a context-sensitive menu, like system settings or activity settings (speaking of unintuitive functionality with poor discoverability)

So in order to interact with any kind of menu (including the controls menu), you have to use touch.

For someone who is used to selecting things using the top right button, even on predominantly touch watches, I'm finding this behaviour very strange and hard to get used to. But I think this is the way Garmin is intending on going!

Yeah I'll just stick with my 5-button + touch watches for as long as Garmin makes em. They're not intuitive, but they're great once you take the time to learn them. (ofc this is the problem - even 10 years ago, many people were not willing to learn a shortcut such as "hold UP to open the menu"). And the selling point for me is that 99% of the functionality can be used without touch. I'm a runner: I've tried Garmin predominantly touch / touch-first watches in the past, and I always had issues with watch accidentally saving a running activity while it was paused, due to phantom touches (rain, long sleeves). I've seen complaints about this stuff for several generations of Vivoactive watches, and even for modern Forerunners. Even though touch is disabled by default for activities on Forerunner watches, some users like to have touch enabled, and phantom touches are still a problem. Since FR955/FR965 were released, Garmin has changed the design of the pause menu a couple of times to avoid saving the activity due to accidental touches.

I do agree this is probably the way Garmin will go on predominantly touch / touch-first watches.

Again, the thing with removing the menu "button" (or specifically, universal menu shortcut) seems like it was foreshadowed by various changes that Garmin made on 5-button watches to give you a different way to open a context-sensitive menu.

And I do think they are trying to simplify things and make them more intuitive/discoverable in some ways. Like any time that a context-sensitive menu is available, it will be in the form of an action menu with a visible indicator. (Again, system settings apparently don't count as a context-sensitive menu anymore)

But then again, now Garmin is giving you a way to open activity/app list from *anywhere*, isn't that just another kind of universal shortcut? I guess this is different in the sense that it's a short press which is arguably more discoverable than a long press.

Note that this does not happen every time you use the top right button. If you are on a standard view, the normal behaviour is seen and you can detect the button. This only happens on menus, e.g. on menu2 or I imagine, an action menu. I did not try the latter, but it would be consistent with the native behaviour.

Yeah, this is super inconsistent and i don't like it.

Basically, they are forcing you to use touch pretty much everywhere. You cannot generally (in some cases you can), use the top right button to select anything anymore.

As annoying as this sounds, Vivoactive 3 only has one button and it's a lot like this.

- short press of the button from the watchface opens the activity list

- short press of the button does *not* select anything, not even an activity. (you have to tap on an activity to open it.)

- within an activity, short press of the button starts/stops the timer (or cancels the save/discard prompt after you tap Done while the timer is paused)

-- I noticed that when you open an activity, the watch displays a little hint: "press button to start/stop". This goes back to how Garmin probably thinks there's nothing intuitive about using buttons for anything

- everywhere else, short press of the button returns to the watchface

- long press of the button opens the controls menu

- long press of the screen opens a context-sensitive menu, like system settings or activity settings (speaking of unintuitive functionality with poor discoverability)

So in order to interact with any kind of menu (including the controls menu), you have to use touch.

For someone who is used to selecting things using the top right button, even on predominantly touch watches, I'm finding this behaviour very strange and hard to get used to. But I think this is the way Garmin is intending on going!

Yeah I'll just stick with my 5-button + touch watches for as long as Garmin makes em. They're not intuitive, but they're great once you take the time to learn them. (ofc this is the problem - even 10 years ago, many people were not willing to learn a shortcut such as "hold UP to open the menu"). And the selling point for me is that 99% of the functionality can be used without touch. I'm a runner: I've tried Garmin predominantly touch / touch-first watches in the past, and I always had issues with watch accidentally saving a running activity while it was paused, due to phantom touches (rain, long sleeves). I've seen complaints about this stuff for several generations of Vivoactive watches, and even for modern Forerunners. Even though touch is disabled by default for activities on Forerunner watches, some users like to have touch enabled, and phantom touches are still a problem. Since FR955/FR965 were released, Garmin has changed the design of the pause menu a couple of times to avoid saving the activity due to accidental touches.

I do agree this is probably the way Garmin will go on predominantly touch / touch-first watches.

Again, the thing with removing the menu "button" (or specifically, universal menu shortcut) seems like it was foreshadowed by various changes that Garmin made on 5-button watches to give you a different way to open a context-sensitive menu.

And I do think they are trying to simplify things and make them more intuitive/discoverable in some ways. Like any time that a context-sensitive menu is available, it will be in the form of an action menu with a visible indicator. (Again, system settings apparently don't count as a context-sensitive menu anymore)

But then again, now Garmin is giving you a way to open activity/app list from *anywhere*, isn't that just another kind of universal shortcut? I guess this is different in the sense that it's a short press which is arguably more discoverable than a long press.

Note that this does not happen every time you use the top right button. If you are on a standard view, the normal behaviour is seen and you can detect the button. This only happens on menus, e.g. on menu2 or I imagine, an action menu. I did not try the latter, but it would be consistent with the native behaviour.

Yeah, this is super inconsistent and i don't like it.