My old Fenix 3 HR would stay connected to my phone via bluetooth at least twice as far as my new F5. Did Garmin decide to gimp the bluetooth transceiver on the F5? It literally buzzes all day long... sometimes when I'm walking only 15 feet away from it. Yes, I can turn off the notification but I really liked how my old Fenix 3 HR would buzz and warn me when I left my phone behind. Nice feature to have. Would hate to lose that feature because of a gimped BT transceiver. I'm hoping that my unit is just defective. Any others here that had a Fenix 3 HR and now have a F5 experiencing the same?
yes, I experience the same.
Even at night when I put my watch under my pillow and have my head over it, it loose connection so I wake up with the "connection lost". This never ever happend on the f3. I also tried to change the 30secs to 1min time before "connection lost"
Lets hope it can be sorted out by firmware, because the bluetooth as it is, is really bad.
No problem with my Fenix 5 Sapphire, connected to my phone within a 5m range ...
5m is ok with me, even 7 or so, but more I get disconnected when the F3 is able to keep the connection even up to 20m! I can even change floors in my house and still have a connection with F3 but F5 looses it the moment I go to the stairs! More worrying it looks like the same happens with ANT connections, have a look here I get drops from my sensors at the same time! https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1653152865
This is the beta FW but the same happened in the stable FW. I worry that the smaller bezel was obtain only by making the antena smaller - very dissapointed. Not sure what to do, I just sold F3 so ...
Same really bad experience here - with my Fenix 5 Sapphire (and Samsung Galaxy S7). I owned Fenix 3 previously and (after several firmware upgrades at the begging) the connection was really stable. With Fenix 5 it is nightmare. It loses connection and reconnects gazilion times a day. I wear watch on my left had, and typically I carry phone in my right back pocket of jeans - this causes loosing connection and re-connecting all the time. Sometimes I even experience the connection lost when a sit at the desk, having watch on my hand and phone lying on the desk. This is not acceptable.
How is other people experience? I truly hope this can be fixed by FW upgrade, in other case I will have to return this unit.
Same here - Multiple disconnects (Android, Sony Z1 compact)
Same issues here with my Fenix 5 (around 1.5 week old :) ). Didn't own any activity tracker-ish devices before, so at the beginning I thought it's just a poor range and it's normal. But, it actually looses the connection even if it's really close to the phone. I thought it's an issue with phone, but if others have same problems it might be Fenix itself. My gf has Fenix 5s since few days and she has same phone model, will see if it's any better in few days.
I was just getting ready to start a thread on this...
I have a Sony Z5 Compact and experience the same. I've been doing a lot of testing to try and nail it down but no luck this far.. I have 2 BT related issues.
1. When in an activity (cycling for me) I have been checking the phone connection via the quick menu often but I don't get disconnect notifications. What happens with mine is in the quick menu (hold light button) I will see 'waiting for phone' then the next time I check it will say 'connected'. During a 3 or 4 hour ride this will happen 20 or so times.
2. If the watch sits unused for a while the BT connection is somehow lost even though it says it's still connected and will sync. What I mean by this is if it stays on my desk overnight while I sleep and even though the phone is just a few feet away it looses it's connection. I can still sync, weather still shows ect but SMS messages never come through. If I reboot the phone, then SMS notifications start working again..
I am not sure if this is a watch or a phone issue. Issue 1. appears to be a BT issue maybe on the watches end while issue 2. appears to have something to do with my phone, maybe..
I've toggled on 'Connection Helper' in the GC app but that does not help. I've unpaired and repaired about 20 times and no change in behavior and I've reset the phone and the watch once each..
I'm also having connection issues with my fenix 5. Lose the connection a little over half the distance of my 735. Able to wonder around the entire house without losing connection on the 735....disappointing.
Same really bad experience here - with my Fenix 5 Sapphire (and Samsung Galaxy S7). I owned Fenix 3 previously and (after several firmware upgrades at the begging) the connection was really stable. With Fenix 5 it is nightmare. It loses connection and reconnects gazilion times a day. I wear watch on my left had, and typically I carry phone in my right back pocket of jeans - this causes loosing connection and re-connecting all the time. Sometimes I even experience the connection lost when a sit at the desk, having watch on my hand and phone lying on the desk. This is not acceptable.
How is other people experience? I truly hope this can be fixed by FW upgrade, in other case I will have to return this unit.
This is exactly the same for me, Left wrist, phone in right pocket and constantly get disconnect problem. Man I hope they fix this, it is extremely annoying to get constant vibration on the watch from this. Everytime it happens I think it's a notification text, email or something.
Can't say for me it's really a complaint as mine seems to always stay connected when the phone is close by but with my 235 I could pretty much be anywhere in my house, including often upstairs or the basement, and if my phone was located in its normal pretty central main floor location the 235 would almost always stay connected. The F5 nowhere nearly as good. To me I'm not willing to really complain that the F5 is 'bad' more so that the 235 was really really good. If the phone is within 15-20 feet of the F5 I have had zero issues, but definitely can't roam the house like I used to be able to.
Why do people need to be connected across the house? BLE for me is for uploading runs so after a run I just make sure I'm close to the phone for the 2 minutes the upload takes. I guess you could want instant access to your notifications, but you could just keep the phone in your pocket,
I must say, I've never turned on the connection alert, I don't see the point. I'd be interested in people's use case.
