To Garmin team: Suggestions for stock watch face

First of all, kudos to the Garmin team for strong improvements to both hardware (smaller size, better bezel) and software going from F3/HR to F5. Among the most helpful software improvements for day-to-day use is the three-dial analog watch face with customizable data fields - huge improvement from what was previously available! That said, here are some suggestions for further improvements (in many cases, to bring to parity with other smartwatches in the market):

  • Please add 'weather in current location' as a data field option (using phone location/data via Connect, not internal sensor); for those with battery concerns, perhaps allow choice of how frequently phone is checked (e.g., every 1, 15, 30, 60 min etc)
  • For day/date field: (1) There looks to be enough room for "Mar 18" to be shown under "Sat" instead of just "18", (2) I don't it's helpful for the circle surrounding the data to fill in over the course of the month and (3) the color of the circle surrounding the data should match whatever accent color is selected (like the other two dial circles do)
  • For the battery icon at 12 o'clock, would be good to have the option to show that in percentage (or maybe automatically doing that once it hits below 25% or something like that)
  • To make the phone icon at 12 o'clock more useful, I would suggest adding a tiny envelope to the upper right corner of that icon slot when there are any uncleared notifications pending (showing the number pending if possible), only appearing if there are any (no need to appear if zero)
  • Replace the words "Alt" and "Baro" with icons (like the nice sunrise/sunset ones) for consistency and because it looks better; for example, maybe have a couple of mountain peaks for altimeter reading
  • In order to make sure the time is the most visible thing on the watchface, I would suggest making the circles surrounding the three dials thinner (maybe the size of the "unfilled" portion of those dials that fill over time towards a goal)
  • With that being said, to be able to see data in the dials better while watch hands are over them, make the black area in the watch hands 'transparent' so that the data 'underneath' are visible
  • Please add HR as a data field option; could poll every minute like altitude and/or show RHR
  • For background color, it would be nice to have an "Automatic" option that changes from white during the day to black at night using sunrise/sunset time (this would actually be more helpful for the digital watch face)
  • Speaking of the digital watchface, (1) I would consider using it more if it allowed 4 data fields (which seems possible if there were two above and two below the time) and (2) I think the time would look better if there were a colon between hour and minutes (or at least the option for that)
  • One couple of final things not related to watch face: (1) can you enable the Fenix's battery life to be shown next to the Bluetooth icon in the top right iPhone status bar - I've seen headsets and other BT accessories allow this, so I image this would be possible and (2) i think the bold font for notifications are a step backwards from the standard (non-bold) font


I'm admittedly a weekend warrior, mostly run, bike, ski and hike, am happy with those apps and will let other more serious athletes suggest improvements on those. The reality is that the watch faces are what I will see the most (and I imagine I'm not alone in this) and so I am most interested in further improvements in them - and I would rather have the functionality come from the stock faces, given Connect IQ options use more battery. Thanks!