Fenix 5X - 10.55 Beta Release

GPS tracking not perfect but much better. probably the best it's been in the 6 months i have owned the 5x. 15 hrs since charge, 1 hour 30 min MTB ride with GPS/Gallileo and still at 89% battery. So, big improvement to battery life too it would seem.

Strange. I mean, neither 2.23 or 2.24 are giving me clean, accurate track lines. That said, comparing the two, I feel 2.24 is slightly better. And by slightly, I mean slightly. If we're nitpicking, yeah..

Also, my GPS lock speed is considerably faster on 2,24. That said, I never had to wait 8 minutes for a fix. Ever. On 2.23 it took between a minute and 2. 2.24 took less time.

You do a soft reboot? I've done two already.

Another update on the battery life: it's awesome! Since 1pm EST yesterday, until now, 9am EST, overnight, including a 61 minute bike ride (as mentioned before), 9.9% battery drain. I would say that is pretty damn good! Without any activity, I'm looking at about 5% drain every 24 hours. An extra 4% for every hour of activity.

Now the fix is pretty fast, like 15 seconds, just the first fix took long. BTW, EPO is still expired even after synchronization with Garmin Express latest version as was advised by Garmin Heath in post related to thread GPS 2.23. Tracks of all activities on 2.23 were really good in my case.
Battery so far looks better than before, but I fully charged just few hours ago. I have Battery Gauge installed so I can give good measurements later on.

I switched off waited a minute and swithed on. Does this count as a soft reboot or not?

For me OWS is ok (in attach real situation), link: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/2993206612
but walking it is not so good (in attach real walk), link: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/2994630625
For both - only gps version 2.24 ...ciq.forums.garmin.com/.../1399651.jpg

My worst tracking with this new gps version (older was better). I'll send the details as I read above, but you can check the link.
The measured distance was 2.66 km, so 10% difference between the real and measured distance. :(

Second attempt, same distance, but afternoon and backward direction is much better, but still not real good:
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/2995379000

Sent this mail with files a moment ago:


_First time with a Beta on Fenix 5X_

Negative:

* Could not use GPS+Galileo (southern Sweden). Connection not stable, it seemed...
* Connection problems at start with GPS+Glonass. Real GPS flakiness or Graphics bug?
* Worst GPS+Glonass running track I've yet to experience.

Positive:

* (Instant) Pace more stable than on production FW with GPS FW 4.xx
* Better battery handling than production - today 10% down for a 2 hour run (RDPod only accessory). Production draws the first 10% (99 to 89) during 1,5 hours on GPS+Glonass

Wall of Text:

FW 10.55 Beta with GPS FW 2.24 created the worst running track I've seen on this Fenix 5X watch since purchase in July 2017. Production FW 10.10 (with latest GPS FW 4.40) does not show the cleanest of tracks, but it has never done up to 25 metres offsets like I got today with GPS+Glonass - the usual combo I employ here in southern Sweden. At most it has been 10 metres off. Did I run on the pedestrian/bike path or on the nex street over? I know right now, but would have a hard time to determine that from the resulting GPS map.

Installed the Beta FW yesterday afternoon. Shut the watch down (like I always do even though the install reboots the watch), then turned it on and attached to the computer for copying of the GPS FW. The watch never registered (offered to be mounted) on this Linux OS, and when I got up to have a look it was showing the Blue Garmin Triangle that starts the boot sequence... [aka Crash]

Could mount on the next try and have copied off the resulting Garmin/Debug/err_log.txt and some other system files (attached). Installed GPS FW - having deleted EPO.BIN - and shut the watch down HARD by holding in the Light button 15 seconds until the screen turned black. This supposedly erases all knowledge of position from files in the invisible storage space on the watch. [It also creates a short err_log.txt by the way]

Went out on the balcony, which has a thin slice of sky visible (North and SouthEast), to get a GPS fix and a soak. With a 'clean' watch like this, a full green ring connection normally takes a couple of minutes on GPS+Glonass. Yesterday I first tried GPS+Galileo. After about 5 minutes the ring turned green, but it quickly lost one segment and went to red. Then green full ring and back to red missing a segment. This won't produce a good soak, I thought, and backed out of the Run activity to change the setting with a GPS+Glonass choice.

That combination quickly got an OK connection (since position already was known by now), but "GPS Elevation" was very low (30 metres off). And it didn't change. I soon lost patience with waiting for a better number, and started the session for a 30 minute 'GPS soak'.

Done, the watch was turned off over night.

This Friday morning, 1,5 hours earlier than previous run (Wednesday on productin FW - .fit files included), I tried to start the Run session with GPS+Galileo. No dice! It behaved exactly as on the balcony - even though standing outside with few obstacles and having put a fresh EPO.BIN on the watch. The initial full green ring connection took 50 seconds (about double time compared to production with GPS+Glonass), but then it went Red missing a segment, Green full ring, Red etc. I watched five of these failures before opting for using the normal GPS+Glonass instead.

Starting such a session, _it_ also went Red missing a segment, Green ring, Red etc two times before being a stable green ring. That has never happened on production FWs! Either this GPS FW is really flaky OR the graphics showing the connection quality is buggy...

Walking 50 metres to my starting point, I then waited for the Garmin (Instant) "Pace" datafield to show no movement [--"--]. It took a full minute while standing still. Production normally settles in ca 20 seconds. "GPS Elevation" showed a stable 37 metres (I'm at 57) but I started the Run anyway. [ie pushed Start button]

There was, to my knowledge, no GPS disconnects during the run. Nothing in the track suggests it and I kept an eye on a piece of CIQ data for GPS signal strength I use in a complex datafield. It was full whenever I looked.

The Wednesday and Friday runs share path the first 7 km, as well as the last 6 km, so should be enough to show what I mean with "Worst GPS+Glonass running track I've yet to experience" on this Beta FW.

Ending on a positive note with (Instant) Pace: Previously it has jumped around even when doing steady state runs in the open. Running 'steadily' at say 6:30/km it could suddenly show 5:30 or 7:30. Today I only saw that kind of a jump at one point. Otherwise the numbers corresponded very closely to my 'feeling' of pace, and followed both intentional pace changes as well as unintentional such due to road undulation.

I've installed many betas before, but this one wont install. I am currently on 10.0. Ive copied the GUPDATE.GCD to the \GARMIN folder from both a MAC and a PC. I did a factory reset on the device, then tried again. I've even used different cables for syncing. Each time, the GUPDATE.GCD file is removed after disconnecting the watch, but no update happens. I've re-downloaded the update, even tried to install the backdate version, and still nothing. I'm out of ideas...

Any suggestions?

UPDATE: Okay, problem solved. I downloaded the beta for the 3rd time, this time the file sizes were completely different. Dunno... works now.

I just did a mountain bike ride. It looks like the elevation gain is showing lower again with 10.55. I have been using both my 5X and 910XT at the same time to capture my rides for a while. They were fairly close with the 5X on software V10.51 (5X around 15% less). But on my first ride with 10.55 the 5X showed an elevation gain of 201 meters and the 910XT showed 289 meters after 23km. A BIG difference again!! That is almost 44% different/less!!

It is hard to say which one is actually correct but I would assume the 910XT is at least consistent since nothing is changing on it (no firmware...). The 5X is always showing significantly lower. I don't really care what the elevation gain is but I would like it to be consistent so I can compare the elevation gains when I go to new/different locations. Maybe I should have stayed with 10.51.

On the positive side it does appear that the battery life is slightly better with 10.55 than 10.51.

I'm curious, are you using GLONASS or GALILEO? Or just GPS?

GPS & GALILEO
But his place is really wrong for signal, because there is a lot of big houses. This is city of Budapest.