Fenix 5/5s Plus - 6.55 Beta Release

Any experience with the new GPS fw? Some improvements, hopefully?

Just an FYI, I'm on the 6.55 beta and had a crash yesterday while doing a running activity. The crash occurred right as an auto lap triggered a voice prompt for pace and heart rate zone. Seems to still be some issues with this. Oddly enough, I never had any crashes on 6.00.

That's not odd. You went from a stable release to a beta...I'd really like for them to release some of these fixes to a stable channel, since my fenix is my device "of record."

That's not odd. You went from a stable release to a beta...I'd really like for them to release some of these fixes to a stable channel, since my fenix is my device "of record."

I do realize it's a beta and therefore not stable. However the fact that per the beta patch notes: "fixed an intermittent issue where the device could crash during an activity" I do find odd. Specifically because my device didn't exhibit the behavior previously. So not only did the beta not fix the issue, it seems to have made it worse.

I do realize it's a beta and therefore not stable. However the fact that per the beta patch notes: "fixed an intermittent issue where the device could crash during an activity" I do find odd. Specifically because my device didn't exhibit the behavior previously. So not only did the beta not fix the issue, it seems to have made it worse.

My guess is that it's not the same issue. That is, it might be the same (or a similar) symptom, but it's not the same cause. It's also possible that the particular issue that was (maybe) fixed was introduced in the 6.51 beta, btw, and therefore not present in the 6.0 stable, as this is the second beta iteration since the last stable release. These issues are why I don't think I'm going to run a beta firmware on my Fenix, I love testing new stuff, but I got this to be an "of record" device.

My guess is that it's not the same issue. That is, it might be the same (or a similar) symptom, but it's not the same cause. It's also possible that the particular issue that was (maybe) fixed was introduced in the 6.51 beta, btw, and therefore not present in the 6.0 stable, as this is the second beta iteration since the last stable release. These issues are why I don't think I'm going to run a beta firmware on my Fenix, I love testing new stuff, but I got this to be an "of record" device.

I had the restarting issues in 6.00. I just hope that my issue is solved in 6.55, I can live with some new feature being buggy but I really want the watch to be stable when recording an activity. It is hard to tell if it works for me since it has happened in very roughly 5% of my activities.

I had the same thing this morning after installing 6.55 last night. Simple zone 2 training run with Spotify, and on every lap the voice prompt crashed my watch

Seems like something that should have been caught by QA, wonder if there are additional conditions to trigger it, but I definitely won't be trying this beta release.

If i do have my phone with me and headphones paired to it, the connect app sends the voice prompt and it doesn't crash.
I actually got a reply from the beta email address, asking me to send more data files, so they are working on it

Just an FYI, I'm on the 6.55 beta and had a crash yesterday while doing a running activity. The crash occurred right as an auto lap triggered a voice prompt for pace and heart rate zone. Seems to still be some issues with this. Oddly enough, I never had any crashes on 6.00.

I have audio alerts set up for every lap and pace every minute on my Fenix 5+ (on sw 6.55), music from Spotify and paired to AfterShokz Trekz Air headphones. None of the alerts (Lap or Pace), that cut in to the music on the headphones, are causing my Fenix 5+ to crash or otherwise behave badly during Run app activities. So it’s not completely clear what the trigger for this issue is.

Reading the various posts in this thread and the 5X+ 6.55 beta thread, it’s also not entirely clear if people are getting this crash when audio alerts are from their phone via GCM (in which case, is music from phone or watch?) or they have their headphones paired to the Fenix 5+ and both music and alerts are from the watch via the paired headphones. I don’t run with my phone, so I am getting both music and alerts from the Fenix 5+ and I haven’t seen any crashes (yet) on 6.51 beta or 6.55 beta. (Edit: could it even be some sort of conflict of audio alerts for those that run with their phone, but also have headphones paired to the watch for music and audio alerts - so the alerts are being broadcast on both the headphones from the watch and from GCM on the phone at the same time).

Seems like something that should have been caught by QA, wonder if there are additional conditions to trigger it, but I definitely won't be trying this beta release.

This is entirely the reason for pushing out the beta releases; to flush out some non standard bugs. I’m sure the internal QA will have cleared things for a standard set of test scenarios; so as I’ve not seen this issue (yet) and others have, it’s fairly clear that internal QA simply can’t catch everything. On the whole the public betas have been stable for most, but there will always be a use case that catches something unexpected. Even Apple run a public beta programme, which I have tried in the past and (in that case) withdrew from as my phone is too critical to me and there were some quite awful bugs in that Apple beta software. My sports watches are not so critical to me, so I’m fine with testing beta software here.

...Reading the various posts in this thread and the 5X+ 6.55 beta thread, it’s also not entirely clear if people are getting this crash when audio alerts are from their phone via GCM (in which case, is music from phone or watch?) or they have their headphones paired to the Fenix 5+ and both music and alerts are from the watch via the paired headphones. I don’t run with my phone, so I am getting both music and alerts from the Fenix 5+ and I haven’t seen any crashes (yet)...

Poster above you said that their issues are cleared up when they run with their phone, and therefore get the alerts through that. So they are getting the crash when both alert and music are streaming from the watch directly.

This is entirely the reason for pushing out the beta releases; to flush out some non standard bugs. I’m sure the internal QA will have cleared things for a standard set of test scenarios; so as I’ve not seen this issue (yet) and others have, it’s fairly clear that internal QA simply can’t catch everything. On the whole the public betas have been stable for most, but there will always be a use case that catches something unexpected. Even Apple run a public beta programme, which I have tried in the past and (in that case) withdrew from as my phone is too critical to me and there were some quite awful bugs in that Apple beta software. My sports watches are not so critical to me, so I’m fine with testing beta software here.

I certainly understand that QA can't catch everything, but basic regression testing for a device that gives audio alerts and plays music should include triggering an audio alert with music playing, which is why I speculated there might be additional conditions to trigger the crash. Could be a CIQ field, for example.