fenix 5S newbie questions (production date, battery replacement, GALILEO, steps)

1/No
2/Yes
3/Have you read the manual?
4/GLONASS increased battery consumption, GALILEO does not.
5/No. What is your intended use?

Hello TrippyZ

1 - OK - But It's a pity...
2 - And how? Do you have a link to an explanation (with byttery type) or to a video?
3 - To my shame I have to admit: NO. I think, I'll have to to, in case you don't tell it to me...
4 - Sounds good. See 3... (Galileo only in connection with GPS - or now or sometime also alone?)
5 - I have to walk relatively long distances inside our plant (also inside production facilities) and I want to know, how many steps ist takes and how far it is (about 1-3km each).
Of cause, every time I could write down today's steps + walk + write down final steps + calculate done steps + multiply with 0,75m = get steps and destination. This would work.
But now, I have a very expensive new Garmin watch with step counter, and I would have thought, this device can do the job without desk calculator ;)

Well, it the Fenix is marketed as an Outdoor device... but
1. No, but there is a serial number that corresponds to hardware version and I assume the manufacturing date. Only Garmin knows that that secret decoder table is.
2. I think you can have it replaced by Garmin, not user serviceable as it is a custom lithium battery I believe.
3. You can set the satellite types for each outdoor activity by selecting the activity, pressing the center left button Select "[Activity] Settings" (Where activity is whatever you selected), then navigate down to GPS, press the upper-right enter button and select the type. This may not be in the manual as until recently there wasn't all of these settings.
4. Someone else covered it.
5. Try using an indoor listed activity, like indoor walk. It wont use GPS, but it may calculate other things. I think distance will be calculated either way by using Garmin Connect to find all of your details. You wont need a separate calculator. In fact, there will be more information there than you really need. This is one of the best features of Garmin IMHO which puts competitors to shame.

The Fenix has more features in it that most of us will never get around to use. I still haven't figured out how to complete against myself on courses for hikes, but I am sure it is in there somewhere. I just find that a beeping and buzzing watch is a little distracting in the great outdoors so I turn most features off.

TrippyZ

Edit for point 3:

Now, I looked into manuel - and I found what I heared before: There should be:
- GPS (normal)
- GPS + Galileo
- GPS + Glonass
--> I think there is no "general" setting - every action can be modified separately. Right??

But, I looked into action "Wandern" (Hiking)... Settings...
And I only have:
- Normal (nur GPS) = (only GPS)
- GPS+GLONASS
-->> I don't have Galileo.

Software 12.00
GPS 4.40 (1)
CIQ 3.0.1
BLE/ANT/DNS 6.20
WHR 20.03.31

What is wrong???

LiquidSquid : Thanks. You posted while I was writing. I'll try to use/modify/copy an indoor activity.

But I'm a little bit confused, why Galileo isn't on the selection of outdoor activities...

You need a GPS firmware update to use Galileo, which for some reason hasn't installed automatically on your watch. Oddly, it's a smaller number, 2.30, than the current (they changed the numbers to be in line with the numbers on the 5+ series, best I can tell). Try syncing a couple of times with Garmin Express on a computer, and if that doesn't work, download the 11.58 beta software from here https://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=11661 and install ONLY the GPS update from there.

Nobody has suggested that there will be a Galileo-only setting, and that'd be a bit premature anyway as the full constellation isn't up yet. Maybe for future watches with dual-band Galileo, where there might be an advantage to ignoring the other constellations.

Thanks mcbadger for your answer. OK - I'll try it the next days, when I'm back from business trip. I've just seen, that obviously some more people have his problem... (probably because of smaller number 2.30?)
As I have my watch only since Friday, I'm not so well informed about all the things...

BTW: Where do you and the others here in Garmin Forum mainly come from? USA? (big time difference)
I was a little bit surprised that there is no German Forum for Garmin. I thought, Garmin is also located in Switzerland, isn't it?
No problem so far - and I hope you understand what I want to say...

And Galileo: I'm aware of the problems and the (late) timeline. But as I'm here in Europe and Galileo is an European project, of cause I'm interested.
I don't know, how long my fenix 5S will work ... I hope very long ... ;)

But I understtood right: There is NO widget (also not from Others) that allows steps counts "from here"? I'm a little but surprised that nobody elso needs this feature.

If you’re unable to update via Express, try downloading Garmin Webupdater and look for the option to install other files. The GPS update can be done that way. I had to do that for my TC.

Yup, good advice there, Webupdater can sort out some quite badly messed up watches by reinstalling the current firmware, too.

Miaz, I'm in the UK (Cambridge to be exact)

On battery life, a general rule with li-ion batteries is that you will lose about 20% of capacity over 500 charge cycles. For a mobile phone with a daily charge cycle, you would reach 500 cycles in about 18 months, so user replace-ability is an issue . But most people are getting close to a week between charge cycles with their F5 series, so it would be approaching 10 years until you got to 500 cycles with your watch.

Updating for Galileo is a 2 part process (once for the firmware for the watch, and then again for the GPS chipset firmware). The (!) after 4.40 indicates it is ready to receive the 2nd update. It installed for me just fine through Garmin Express, although you do need to wait 15+ minutes for Garmin's servers on the backend to recognize your watch is ready for the 2nd update.

In addition to the "indoor walking" suggestion above, in the Garmin Connect phone app, you can see a graph of steps hour-by-hour.