Picked up my 5X Plus today and have been playing around with it. The pulse ox widget was displaying and working properly when I first got it. After connecting to Garmin Express, it downloaded new firmware (3.10) and since then I no longer see the pulse ox widget or any related data available on the watch. Unless of course I'm just missing it somewhere, but it looks like it's just gone right now.
there are a lot of decisions from garmin and their developers which make no sense. garmin desperately needs some good UI and UX designers (and of course programmers). they simply do not think about the behavior a user is expecting. they decide to do or change something by design, which is the opposite of the expected. this is again obvious in this thread.
I'm guess the Pulse Ox reading isn't valid without an elevation reading. the GPS confirms the reading from the altimeter so only then does it show. If my guesses are right then it makes sense to hide the widget until you know the data is valid.
Why is it “by design” if you don’t mind me asking? It makes no sense to need a GPS fix prior.
Perhaps by design because it needs elevation data from the GPS to calculate pulse ox? However, you’d think it would just use whatever the last elevation value was. Would be interesting to know how recent the last GPS connection needs to be before the pulse ox widget disappears.
It would probably be better to display something like "GPS fix required" on the widget. This would be similar to the training status widget where it doesn't really show anything on the main page until you've run outside 2x in 7 days.
I can't for the life of me understand why an altitude would be required for a pulse-ox measurement. I'm currently doing altitude training and have been using a finger pulse-ox for months...those certainly do NOT have an altimeter in them and work just fine.
The widget looks like it is designed to show SpO2 over an altitude profile. I suspect it is just a "we don't know how to visualize the data" without the altitude point.
