Fenix 5S/5 Plus - 3.21 Beta Release

Hello Fenix 5/5S Plus users,

We have new beta software ready for your upcoming adventures!

Fenix 5S Plus: https://www8.garmin.com/support/down...s.jsp?id=14333
Fenix 5 Plus: https://www8.garmin.com/support/down...s.jsp?id=14331

Note: Please allow for the updates to propagate across all servers. There is no need to post that the link does not work. It will after a bit of patience.

3.21 Change Log Notes:

Improved Open Water Swim performance

Please note, the beta updates released on these forums are not suitable for APAC region devices.

Please send all bug reports to [EMAIL="[email protected]"][email protected][/EMAIL], and indicate which model of the fenix 5 Plus series you have in the subject line.

0 Agepi7o over 6 years ago

I just connect my watch without any
I just connect my watch without any software and it mounts on my Mac. I currently update to the lates beta on the mac and didnt try it since.

Do you have the USB mode of the watch as MTP or aw Garmin? I think that it may be the difference between being mounted or not in Mac. I’m not at home now and I can’t try it.

0 Crispin_Ellisdon over 6 years ago

There is only the “Garmin” and “MTP (Media Transfer)” options under the “USB Mode” settings. From past discussion on the 645 forum, I believe this is to make the devices with music play nicely when directly loading music, podcasts, audio books, etc. I can’t see any simple way around this for those of you with Macs, other than the third party apps already mentioned.

0 jim_m_58 over 6 years ago

With a mac and a music device (va3m, 645m, f5+ series) you need a 3rd party app to read/write files from the device outside of Garmin Express/basecamp. This came up in the 645 forum as well as the CIQ developer forum (with CIQ you copy apps to the watch for testing). Even with windows, MTP devices don't show as a drive, and accessing them can be a bit different than non MTP devices - they show much like a generic MP3 player would.

From what I've heard (I'm on Windows), with a mac you have to close Garmin Express for the 3rd party apps to access the watches.

0 Agepi7o over 6 years ago

I didn't know about this. I've just downloaded and installed "android file transfer" and I can access de Fenix 5 from my mac. It´s pretty easy then to follow the instruction to install de beta.

Thanks

0 shanetkd over 6 years ago

Think I must be missing something? I am using windows, and have the watch set in MTP, I can instal the beta as per instructions and as I have done for all Betas for my 3 and 5X. It all seems good i.e files seem to go in as long as I have Express open but when I disconnect nothing happens.

Thanks for any help

p.s love the 5 plus, its a great watch

0 NYanakiev7 over 6 years ago

Dear Garmin,

could you please address more critical issues or at least provide some feedback:

https://forums.garmin.com/forum/on-t...-not-connected
https://forums.garmin.com/forum/on-t...-of-the-wallet
https://forums.garmin.com/forum/on-t...ic-from-the-uk

As we can see from the user reports F5+ is seriously flawed and looks as though got released too early.

Still it's a great watch and the community is eager to help, however the communication from your side is poor.

Could you please acknowledge issues existence, confirm if you are able to reproduce them and what are the ETAs for the fixes.

thanks

I’m having issues with 1) and 3)
It is a bit odd that the only issue addressed in this beta is open water swimming. There are quite a few other tweaks that I would like to see:

-Further GPS tweaking (accuracy is OK but could be better)
-Optical HR tweaking (better than F5X but have seen reports of issues)
??????-No music services available in the UK ie only way to add music is to upload separately
-Connecting my watch to my MacBook without Android File Transfer is no longer possible

0 RadAd over 6 years ago

Dear Garmin,

could you please address more critical issues or at least provide some feedback:

https://forums.garmin.com/forum/on-t...-not-connected
https://forums.garmin.com/forum/on-t...-of-the-wallet
https://forums.garmin.com/forum/on-t...ic-from-the-uk

As we can see from the user reports F5+ is seriously flawed and looks as though got released too early.

Still it's a great watch and the community is eager to help, however the communication from your side is poor.

Could you please acknowledge issues existence, confirm if you are able to reproduce them and what are the ETAs for the fixes.

thanks

None of these issues sound 'critical' to the wider user community. An example of a critical issue would be if you couldn't navigate with the watch, not simply that you're prompted for a password in Garmin pay too frequently. My suggestion is that if these issues are important to you, your best bet is to call Garmin Support and you'll get an expert who will attempt to reproduce these on their end. I spent an hour on the phone with them today and I found the level of support to be very good.

0 jneuveglise over 6 years ago

I yet have to do my first open water swim session in a couple of days. But I can say that I was pleasantly surprised this morning to see my watch connected to my phone when back in range. I leave my phone during the night in the kitchen which is too far from the bedroom for the watch to keep the connection. Until now (3.10) when back close to the phone the watch did not reconnect until I forced it in the iPhone (X) bluetooth settings (iOS 11.4). Let's see if this continues tomorrow.

0 jneuveglise over 6 years ago

False hope on the connection issue. Still several disconnects today. Have to manually force the reconnection or restart iPhone Bluetooth. Never happened with the F5.

0 Darre80 over 6 years ago

I just connect my watch without any

Do you have the USB mode of the watch as MTP or aw Garmin? I think that it may be the difference between being mounted or not in Mac. I’m not at home now and I can’t try it.

Currently i don't own Fenix 5 Plus but i had one and will receive a new one on monday i hope ;) But like i sad before i just connect my watches and they all work i think that they are in MTP mode.