Hi all,
I recently picked up a Fenix 5x plus from a reputable eBay watch shop for a bargain price - it had been returned for a broken watch strap, so was being sold as B grade stock, a replacement strap having been fitted (which looks to me to be a genuine Garmin strap).
Received the watch on Saturday and it appears to be in unused condition, as expected. Pairing with my phone was a flaky, annoying experience, but bluetooth can be like that, and once paired the connection to my phone has seemed pretty stable.
However, I'm having some issues connecting to a computer - any computer (have tried my desktop, another windows laptop, and an old macbook). In MTP mode, the watch enters a reboot loop. The charging screen is displayed momentarily before the watch restarts. Eventually it will just turn off and stay that way. In legacy "garmin" mode, the watch will remain powered on and usable whilst plugged in and charging....until I launch basecamp. When i start basecamp (which shows the watch as connected in the devices list), after some period of time, the watch reboots. It does not seem continuous as with MTP mode. I can't get Garmin Express to find the watch simply for this reason - the reboot is too frequent - and Garmin Express will not find the watch in legacy "garmin" mode.
The vendor on eBay has been really accommodating and has offered to let me return the watch at their expense. However, they tested the watch and found the PC connection to be fine. To me, this feels like a software rather than hardware problem.
One additional noteworthy observation is that when i received the watch its battery was completely flat so I connected it to my PC to charge it, and when I came back sometime later, the watch had powered on and was on the first-time setup wizard - i.e. asking me to pick a language, weight/height, gender, etc. I went through the wizard as far as setting the clock whilst the watch was plugged in to the computer and powered on without it shutting down or restarting once. Because i couldn't get a decent GPS fix inside, i then unplugged the watch and took it outside, but since the battery had hit about 65%, i just left it on my wrist the rest of the day - i didn't go back and reconnect it to the PC. Then, later in the day, the watch picked up an update via Garmin connect - it had been running version 12 when i received it, and updated itself to version 14.0.
On Sunday, i plugged the watch into the PC to mess about on Garmin Express and that's when the reboot loop problem seemed to start.
So, to me, it looks like it potentially started when the software updated to 14, and is related to an attempt to establish a data connection to the watch - occurs on connection in MTP mode as windows tries to index the drive as external storage, or when basecamp is launched in legacy mode when presumably basecamp tries to talk to the watch. I'd like to try and repeat the version 12 experiment but of course i can't because the firmware downgrade process requires a computer connection to transfer the old files.
I'm currently debating whether i can live with this as a fault, given the device otherwise seems rock solid. Almost all interaction with the watch is via the Android app, including syncing routes etc. The only issue is that i think i need a computer connection to upload additional third party maps (unless someone can advise me different).
I guess my questions are:
1) has anyone had this problem and found a way to fix it? Is there anything i can do with developer mode on the watch?
2) does anyone know a way to either downgrade the watch firmware to 12 or perhaps try an update to the 15 beta without a PC connection?
3) my watch shows v14.0 in the about screen, but i am aware there have been multiple minor releases of 14 - 14.71/72/73. If the about screen is to be believed, i'm not sure why my watch isn't updating to those versions. Is there a way i can do this, again, without a PC connection?
Apologies for the long and rambling message, and thanks for any help that can be provided
