Can someone explain GPS versions please?

Former Member over 6 years ago

I have Fenix 5x stable version 10.20 (auto-updated just recently) and I see that the GPS version is shown as 4.40 (Yep. 4.40. It definitely says 4.40 in the settings->about screen. Not 2.40)
However, I read in some of the Beta versions (such as 10.58) that the GPS version is 2.20 or 2.30 and some people are anticipating 2.40.

I find it odd that the later versions of Fenix software (even betas) would have GPS versions with lower numbers.
Is this just a case of peculiar version numbering? Is GPS 2.20, 2.30 and 2.40 actually later than 4.40? Or are some betas actually rolled back the GPS version?

Can someone explain this and perhaps say which version of the GPS software is the latest and which one is supposed to be the best? (Accuracy and power)

Thanks.
Terry

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Somewhere along the line they merged the F5 and F5plus GPS firmware, so the next version after 4.40 was the 2.20 and now we have the 2.30. Now the whole family is in the same GPS firmware (F5, F5plus and 935).

0 jim_m_58 over 6 years ago

With the f5x, the production FW (like 10.20) doesn't have Galileo and uses the 4.40 version of GPS. The beta FW (like 10.58) has Galileo and uses the 2.xx version of GPS.

Both production and beta FW for the plus devices have Galileo, so they use the 2.xx GPS.

For the main FW, generally the last digit indicates production or beta, with 0 being production

If you look in about, you'll see a "!" in the version number of GPS if there's a mismatch.

0 etparks over 6 years ago

If you look in about, you'll see a "!" in the version number of GPS if there's a mismatch.

Thanks for that explanation--never understood why the "!" was shown!
And I guess the mismatch does not cause issues...at least I have not had any appear.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Thank you all. Now I get it.
Which version is supposed to be the more power efficient?
I originally bought the watch on the basis of a "25 hour" run-time with GPS, but have since found the ultra-track GPS mode to be not very good (I get way too many 'off-course' warnings and really bad log-tracks), so I'm lucky to get about 12 hours using normal GPS. Since I run so slow, 12 hours just isn't enough sometimes!
Terry