Third party Watch Faces working?

Watch face keeps reverting to original format

So running a few watch faces that sort of worked before 3.3. Had intermittent issues with either altitude and/or sunrise sunset times. Sometimes they would work...more often not. However when I upgraded to 3.3 the watch face I use most, HandsFive, barely works at all and after a few hours reverts back to the original HandsFive format. This means my chosen data fields, colours, hand shape, etc. all revert back to the original HandsFive load.

Very very frustrating. How can they have so many problems, for so long now, with ConnectIQ fields/faces/widgets etc.

In general, if you are having an issue with sunrise/sunset with CIQ watchfaces, check out this post:

https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?376023-quot-HandsFive-quot-Watch-Face-Issues&p=984097#post984097

For something like HandsFive, and lost settings, use 'Contact Developer" on the app store page for it, and let the developer know. If this is a problem, the developer is the only one that might be able to pinpoint the problem so it get's reported and fixed.

Jim; as much as you like to blame all the issues on and insist that they can only be fixed by the developers... we know for a fact (since it has been told to us directly by Garmin) that there are known issues with the Fenix 5X when it comes to ConnectIQ watch faces.

The watch face developers know their faces are broken, thats clear just from looking at the reviews on the ConnectIQ store; the guy who created GearMin bought a Fenix 5X recently purely to try to diagnose the issue with his watchface and the 5X and to try to implement a workaround to the problems.

in the end; we need Garmin to fix the problem with the actual watch before the watch face dev's can make them work properly.

James, the reality here is that there are 100's of watchfaces for the 5x, and only 2 or 3 that seem to be having a problem. If it is a garmin problem, it sure sounds to me like it's something about those 2-3. (I've tested 10 different ones myself and not seen the problems others are seeing with GearMin or HandsFive)

Getting the developer involved could find a bug in their code or provide details as to "why" it's happening to Garmin if it is FW (developers have their own bug reporting method). From experience, if you call Garmin support, they'll often say "uninstall that watchface".

And there are a few things that are different, CIQ wise, on the f5x vs the f5 and all other watches. Not bugs in the FW, just things that need to be taken into consideration (like how to get lat/lon so a WF can show sunrise/sunset.)

Trust me. I want to see things like are happening with GearMin and HandsFive fixed, regardless of where the problem actually is, and getting the actual developer involved is the best method to do that, IMHO and based on my own experience.

As I've said before; the problem is that a lot of the watch faces are appear to be working fine either don't use the functions that are broken OR do use them and people don't realise that they are not working how they should be.

We've had similar discussions before where you have mentioned a watch face by name as working fine; but when I try that same face on 2 different models of watch, I can clearly see it working properly on one watch and not working the same on the Fenix 5X (updating slower, the data being incorrect or out of date, no information showing up at all, crashing, settings not saving etc.).

So I can only assume that the watch faces you have tried and believe to be working fine are actually NOT working fine when you compare them to how they operate on something like a Forerunner 935.

I'm sure the watch face dev's can at least update the faces to prevent the crashing; but until Garmin fix the underlying issues wit the 5X, I don't personally think the dev's can fix the the issues relating to features not working correctly.

EDIT:

And if I am wrong and they are indeed working perfectly for some people (as in exactly the same as they do on the 935) then that is still a problem because they don't work the same for everyone. It still shows underlying problems, perhaps even of a worse kind if from one device to the next they are operating inconstantly.

Again, best place to ask is to ask the developer. If you're talking about NoFrills, I know the developer, I have a f5x, and he can send me debug builds, etc, to help narrow down the problem.

I've seen people mentioning 2-3 here, and one developer asking about it in the developer forum. Some of what you think is a bug, could simply be a difference due to the HW being different between the f5 and f5x (all the extra memory for maps, etc). That, for example, is seen as the rise/set issue....

As far as functions, I have many that do hr, rise/set, etc. I also have a f5 and f5x so I can compare them at the same time, on the same wrist! :)

James, it appears that the majority of problems being reported with the watch faces appear to have been fixed by the latest firmware versions. i.e. things like heartrate and altitude not displaying. Therefore, it seems that Garmin have fixed at least some of the problems associated with the 5X despite nothing being mentioned in the release notes. If Garmin were a little forthcoming in the fixes they list in the release notes it may be easier to tell if a problem is fully/partially resolved or not.

Right now I would not like to say if the problems with Gear Min or HandsFive are due to a firmware problem or a watch face problem. But the best people to comment on this are the developers so referring people to them seems most sensible. Certainly the common issues reported with watch faces in general appear fixed in the latest firmware from what I can see. Maybe the fix introduced other issues though. Time will tell.

This is my point; I've tested loads of watchfaces on the current firmware and seen no change at all. On my watch, they still do not work correctly.

If anything; it's actually worse now since some of the watch faces that at least loaded up, now don't.

Again, contact the developer.

Some of what you are seeing may just be your assumption of what you expect.

For example, hr and when it changes.

ALL CIQ watchfaces today only update the screen once a minute most of the time, but will update each second after a gesture for 10 seconds. (that 10 seconds is when many watchfaces show the seconds) So that alone means you'll only see a change at most every minute most times. If the underlying data happens to change during those 10 seconds, it may appear that it's changing more often, but it's not.

(I could point you at the CIQ doc that talks about onEnterSleep() and onExitSleep() and how that works in the code)

Also the way that ALL CIQ watchfaces get the HR is from getHeartRateHistory() which is the 24/7 reading and saved every 1-2 minutes, and the WF just shows the newest sample. The watchface has no way to access real time HR. (ask any WF developer)

It's Garmin not the developers

So while you can get certain CIQ fields to work they do not update properly. For example using the process above of starting an activity, then pulling up the watch face, then stopping and discarding the activity (which is a PITA btw) does work to populate the sunrise/sunset times they do not update correctly. For example on both GearMin and HandsFive I did that yesterday. Both populated with the correct sunrise/sunset times. However neither watch face updated the correct sunrise/sunset time today...they were stuck on yesterdays sunrise/sunset time (when it has changed about 1 minute for sunrise and about 3 minutes for sunset). I wonder how many people, are just seeing a number in those fields, but don't honestly know that they are wrong. This issue, or very similar issues, have been consistent through multiple Garmin updates. Also, as I detailed in other posts, since going to v3.3 HandsFive keeps reverting back to it's default watch face - none of my changes last more than a few hours (I'll try the same thing today with GearMin). This issue has been reported by other members since update to v3.3.