Fēnix 5S/5 – 3.44 Beta Release

For me. Fenix 5 Sapphire (bought mid May) running FW 3.44.

GPS - Good. Any variation from actual route is around 1-5 metres. Occasionally it may approach 10 metres if I'm in heavy tree cover but rarely.
BT - No issues. I haven't been able to get it to drop connection.

Optical HR. So - so for the first 5-10 minutes then settles down. If I'm doing anything significant I always use the HR chest strap as the OHR is not great for heavy exercise. I still feel there is definitely room for improvement here. It doesn't seem to perform as well as the Vivoactive HR's OHR.

Ant+ HR strap. No Problems with it dropping out. I thought I did on the original FW but quickly realised I'd accidentally clipped in the HR monitor onto the strap the wrong way round :rolleyes:. Worked fine once I changed it back to the right way! It connects more or less straightaway with both Speed and Cadence sensors on my bike and never drops out. Never even had to give it a second thought. Fenix is attached to the handlebars with one of Garmin rubberised mounts.

Barometer. No problems at all. Returns a value that is within 0.6 of an accurate home based weather station.

Altimeter. Seems to work well. The usual variation due to air pressure/weather changes. Once calibrated before a climb / hike it seems to be very accurate. Altitude gained / lost etc near enough matches that calculated by Viewranger recorded tracks.

It would be handy if it had a "Home" setting. i.e. if you enter gps coordinates of where you live and the height etc, it would automatically adjust the altitude to the set amount for that location.

Straps. Quality control need to pay attention to the buckles. One of the straps that came with the Sapphire was cutting into my arm, quite sharp edges, while the other wasn't as bad but was still a little uncomfortable. The strap wasn't that tight. I filed the edges down so it was more rounded. No more cut marks on my arm.

Bezel. No marks yet but a little disappointed that they didn't use something like titanium that to avoid issues of visible scratches. Especially when you are buying the Sapphire version.

Overall very happy but, look forward to any improvements they can make in terms of accuracy with the OHR and GPS...

There is a theory that it was the early units that are having the issues. I was one of the first adopters but have had a second unit since then which is just the same.

Once again, Garmin fails to communicate properly. There is a disconnect between Support team, devs and this forum. If the trend is that ppl complain about BT issues, I'd expect Garmin to acknowledge and state the actions they propose (replace, FW fix etc.).
I decided to RMA my device, based on some vague troubleshooting Support team proposed, but, if the replacement will have same issues, that means that I spent 600 Euro for a half baked product and incompetent support, which costed me money, time to go to the post office back and forth and overall dissatisfaction.
Not writing this just fr sake of complaining - I'm just feeling helpless here - hoping that somebody from Garmin will read this and action properly. I mentioned already, I really like the device, and, I also understand that some things are still being improved. But, with no proper communication and acknowledgement of user feedback I'm just feeling like I'm being ripped off.

Majority of the F5 are impacted. I cannot have a consistent livetrack if I wear my phone on a different side than my watch while running.

Biking with the phone in my back pocket is even worse.
F5 is clearly at fault.
Add this to the gps issue, pace completely upside down (it can tell me I'm one or two min /km slower than my actual pace, then 1quicker just to catch up the average, distance being correct though.
I'm looking for a FR 935

I haven't used Livetrack, but have no problems with smart notification when biking or running, even if the phone is on my belt or in my backpack. Few seconds after I hear a "ding" on my phone I can see the notification on the watch.
At home, it has whole floor connectivity. It drops when I go to the other floor, however even i wifi has problems with this and I needed to put a repeater downstairs.

Can we compare S/N for units working / not working?

Mine has 536019349 and drops sometimes

[FONT=Open Sans, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]fenix 5 Serial number 538003419 paired with iPhone 6: 20m+ connectivity[/FONT]

Assuming Garmin has not sold more than 2 million units it seems that 53-6 and 53-8 are different HW revisions.
So mine is unit 19349 revision 6
Yours is unit 3419 revision 8

Curious to see if revision 7 also exists....

Symptoms:

1. BT connection to the phone drops irregularly: within the reach of the phone - 30 cm away, even, 5-7 times per day
2. If it disconnects being inclose proximity to the phone (30 cm, same desk, pocket etc.), it won't connect back, (or maybe it will, after 1-2h), unless I re-enable the BT
3. BT range is around 5-6 meters only - it will disconnect and connect back if I leave/re-enter this 5-6 meters range)

HW info:

Phone: Sony Xperia Z1 Compact (Stock Sony Android OS, freshly installed 2 month before I got my F5)
Phone OS: Android 5.1
Watch: Fenix 5
Watch FW: 3.41 (beta)
Watch Serial: 536000172

Curious to see if revision 7 also exists....

Not sure, whether it is a good idea disclosing serial numbers on the web, but my begins with 53A...