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Display turns off whilst underwater diving

2861219
11 months ago

So I recently upgraded my Garmin Descent mk2 to the Garmin Descent mk3. I love all the extra features of the mk3 and its better battery life, but then I took it diving....

I've taken it on 5 dives now, and no matter how many times I have checked to make sure the setting is 'DISPLAY IS ON', it always reverts back to timing out and going black at 15 seconds.

Having the screen go black underwater every 15 seconds ona  dive computer is not only dumb, it is unsafe. As someone who is carrying a large camera system in one hand, or tools for working, having to try to contort your arms together to press a watch button to bring the screen back on to check your depth, ascent rate, deco time etc is really annoying, and completely impractical.  I don't want to have to press the watch button every 15 seconds to see how much longer on a safety stop, or more importantly, when checking my ascent rate from depth. I also have found that neither the wrist movement or touchscreen will activate the display underwater.

The Garmin mk2 always had the screen on during diving, and it worked perfectly. Now that I have discovered the mk3 screen won’t stay on whilst diving, I’m regretting this upgrade (downgrade…).

If someone has a fix for this, please share. Or if Garmin read this, please change the diving display setting so that the Garmin Mk3 can actually function as a safe diving computer.

  • +1 11 months ago in reply to FFAD

    I am sorry to hear the display is shutting off, while diving. I can confirm the Always On Display, should be the default when in dive mode. And this should not be timing out, or shutting off with DND if in Dive activity. So for this, I would like to collect some examples. I would love to collect some specifics to report to our engineers. For this, I will reach out to you via Private message to discuss this. 

  • 0 11 months ago

    I had this issue with all of my activities. I had “do not disturb” on, check to see if that is active.

  • 0 11 months ago in reply to 3651888

    Yes, it is the 'Do not Disturb' being turned on that is causing the problem of the screen going blacc underwater. I confirmed all this 2 weeks ago by turning on and off with some dives.

    The issue still remains that a dive computer should NEVER go black underwater regardless of what display settings are turned on/off. A dive computer displays always needs to be ON, so hopefully Garmin can provide a software update that prevents the 'Do not disturb' from overriding the display whilst its operating in diving mode.

    I have submitted a ticket to garmin support regarding all this.

  • +1 10 months ago in reply to 2861219

    Update June 19, 2024: 

    Garmin is investigating reports of Display Not Adhering to AOD during Dive and blacking out during a dive. This is a software-related bug and your device does not need to be exchanged. 

    As a work-around, please see the following to adjust DND settings prior to your next dive, which is causing AOD to not be adhered to during dives. After any dives, these can be enabled again for normal use. 

    • System > Do Not Disturb > Edit > Always On Display - Disable
    • System >Sleep Mode > Do Not Disturb - Disable
    • System > Display > Always On Display - Disable

    This will be resolved with our next software update. 

  • 0 10 months ago in reply to Garmin-Laurie

    Your setting recommendations don't appear to be correct. I have all these settings the other way and I am not experiencing the issue while diving.

    My current settings:

    • System > Do Not Disturb > Edit > Always On Display - Don't Change (It's Enabled)
    • System >Sleep Mode > Do Not Disturb - On
    • System > Display > Always On Display > [During Activity, General Use] - On

     

  • 0 10 months ago in reply to 2683990

    Nope, apparently will be fixed in next update.

  • 0 10 months ago in reply to Garmin-Laurie

    I had the same issue on a dive today, my second dive with the Descent MK3i. After checking all of my dive settings and seeing that AOD was on during dive, I changed AOD to on during general use and on the following dive the screen stayed on. Also, during the first dive I may not have started the "dive activity," instead allowing the computer to start the dive automatically. On the second dive with AOD on during "general use," I also made sure to activate the dive activity before diving. Again, first dive screen kept shutting off, second dive screen stayed on the whole time.

  • 0 10 months ago in reply to 7471894

    Was there DND enabled during the dive(s)?

    I have AOD disabled during general use. And I don't use DND at all but tested it during a dive with setting AOD to not change when DND is enabled.

    The display was on for all dives I did during last 3 weeks (24 in total)

    Edit: I was using single gas.

  • 0 10 months ago

    I had this problem today after I switched the ‘Big Numbers’ display setting to on. I have not been able to confirm that the problem went away after.. will try on the next dive.