Update Forthcoming?

I knew going into getting this, that the updates wouldn’t be as plentiful as the other Fenix 5 series. I knew and accepted that as this is a different type of device that involves a Life Support sport. Yes, the watch IS useable with no major issues.

That said, it’s not about what has been done up to this point (or hasn’t been done), it’s been about the complete and utter lack of support whether via email, online chat or via a phone call (which I prefer when it comes to resolving problems). The inconsistency with the responses back from CSR’s where one contradicts the previous CSR (all in the same email), the being bounced from person to person only to be told “we don’t have anyone that can help you with your product...so sorry”.

Can you remember the last time you saw ANYONE from Garmin in these discussions within the past month or 2 to discuss the concerns with the product or future ventures to improve the product? This is a $1000-$1500 watch with NO SUPPORT of any kind from this company. This isn’t a failure of the Descent (decent overall product that needs fine tuning), this is a complete failure of Garmin as a company. I don’t need to be waited hand in foot, but if I as a diver, as a dive professional who kind of knows what he’s talking about comes up with a legitimate concerns and it gets ignored...well I take issue with that.

I value companies that WANT your opinions, not ones that gladly take your money, then ignore you. I understand that not everything suggested can or will be implemented, but where’s the proactive effort from Garmin? I don’t see any, do you? This is not putting anything you said down but when someone opens up their wallet to drop at least $1k on your product, show you give a damn.

For the record, I completely agree with you in terms of what Garmin "should" be doing.

But I guess I'm more cynical. Or practical. I never expected much to begin with.

Good support personnel and programs which facilitate customer engagement cost money. Garmin would not want to have their developers directly engaged, because having high paid developers doing customer engagement is both expensive and dangerous (not trained to deal with the public). Which means they need to have standard customer service people available. This means at worst, hiring people, at best, training existing staff on a whole new area. In both cases this costs money. From what you are saying, it appears that Garmin is struggling in that area.

Does this mean that they will never do it? No. That's still to be seen. It's still a new product and it may take time to get their sh&t together.

But I suspect that Garmin will do what all companies do. Spend the least they can to sustain the business. Divers feel that they are special (myself included). We want to be answered, we want our concerns to be addressed more than (for example) a runner or cyclist.

The question to me is, does Garmin know what is expected of them? Probably not, because they are not a dive company first. They do not know the level of engagement their customers have. They assume divers are just like hikers in terms of their demands.

That said, I'm okay waiting and seeing. I love the watch as is, and if Garmin never once released an update I'd probably still be okay (my old Suunto never had an update either). <- - Garmin staff, if you are reading this, this does not mean you are allowed to never improve the watch!

I'm still optimistic that Garmin will do what they need to do to improve the product, at their own pace. Without much interaction with us.

As I have said before, this is the standard operating procedure for Garmin. I don't believe it is unique to the Descent MK1. I have had exactly the same experience with all other Garmin products I owned.

I'm also confident that the bugs and minor niggles will be ironed out, eventually, as they were with the other products.

It is just extremely frustrating seeing a potentially near perfect product (perfect if it had AI) falling short because of poor design decisions and poor development.

As an example, when I woke up this morning my Descent told me I'd walked around 70 steps so far to day, which is about right. When I synced with Garmin Connect Mobile it said I'd done over 1,000 steps and gone down 4 flights of stairs. What sort of poor programming allows that to happen? (I was a progammer for 30 years so I know a thing about writing good code.)

Even now my Descent and Garmin Connect Mobile are reporting different things.

Back on 11/13 we received (or at least I did) an email stating that an update was coming soon to add CCR support and more. Back last week, I had an update to the Language files for a 6.00 update.

Any idea when this update is dropping?

If I could just get my Descent to NOT install the Sensor Hub Update every time I connect to my computer. Garmin is working on this, though no updates from Garmin now in over a week when they asked for some additional information. I will say they are not using the Apple troubleshooting method of do a factory reset and see if that clears the problem as the first step.