I'm pretty sure the exclamation mark means that component didn't install successfully. I got a ! next to one of the components when manually installing one of the betas and went ahead and reinstalled it - after the next reboot the exclamation mark was gone.
You are perfectly right. While the GPS version shows "GPS: 4.40 (!)" something is wrong and GALILEO is not available. The watch has to be reset to factory defaults and sync'ed once with Garmin Express via USB cable (even if there are no updates). After the sync, disconnect the USB cable. The watch should start a GPS update automatically; no manual interaction required. This will literally downgrade the watch to GPS 2.30 (or something else, which is not 4.40). After that, GALILEO will become available, too.
The above is incorrect. The (!) does not require a factory reset.
Quote from Garmin-Heath on another thread ‘** Some extra information that might be useful for some of you. A device with 4.40(!) software will still get a GPS Signal and will not impact the performance of your device.’
I believe the exclamation mark means that there is a different software available that will be sent to your device when possible via GCM or when you sync with Garmin Express