Hello,
I understand there's another thread regarding this topic but I have a few comments to make and some of my comments aren't relevant to the pre-existing thread. I've owned this watch since release and it's great. At some point, I plan to write a full review about it but what I've said so far is very positive, and I hope you can appreciate I'm not just whining for the sake of it.
Aside from using the watch in my day to day life, it's important to me that I can use it on a long hike next year. Without wishing to bore you, I planned to hike the PCT sooner but stuff happened and I'm hoping I can hike it next year. This means I'll be hiking for several months, often without an internet connection, and being able to backup the .FIT files to the phone without an internet connection is important to me. I can of course use USB-OTG but I have noticed a problem with the cable/the watch itself.
Currently, when I connect my charging cable to my computer, it frequently disconnects. When the cable is connected to the watch, there is some play in it i.e. the cable can be rocked up and down; when I rock the cable, the watch always disconnects from the computer. This suggests there's not much spring in the connection and it's too easy to disconnect.
A partial solution to this problem would be to allow the watch to offline sync with the phone i.e. the files get stored on the phone itself. By using the phone as a storage method for the .FIT files, you would still be able to sync with the Garmin servers later on. In my opinion, it is simply bad practise and bad software design to only allow syncing straight to the Garmin servers without some kind of offline cache at least. Moreover, using my proposed method, the watch could connect to the phone as an external device using the bluetooth connection. Using the method suggested, if the watches files were to get corrupted before an internet connection was reached, there'd still be a backup of said files on the phone. Moreover, you'd be able to view some of the files in the Garmin App without needing an internet connection.
I'm in favour of the new cable design in the sense it's shorter, it's lightweight, it's not bulky at all and in theory it's perfect, but in practise this issue is a bit concerning.
I've been a bit unlucky with technology and my last phone was deemed explosive and had to be returned, so I won't be able to try out USB-OTG until september-ish I'm guessing (whenever the note 8 is released). When I get said phone, I'll see how problematic it is to backup files.
My software solution doesn't completely fix the problem, as you need to connect the watch to the computer when you want to add/delete maps. And when I talk about a "solution" or "fix", I really mean just navigating around the problem.
If Garmin could send me a free replacement cable, I would love to try one out. How can I make that happen? The asking price of £25 is too much for $2 of materials with a watch that's currently under guarantee. If it was much cheaper, I'd probably just order one as it's less hassle than returning the watch. I cannot be certain that a new cable will fix the problem either.
Reading forum posts can be quite alarming when you're interested in buying a product, so for those that don't own it yet, I can honestly say it's an excellent device. You can still charge the watch but it seems the data connection is a bit fussy. It is not my intention to scare people off from buying one :).
