The recent "blue triangle" issue may have been a frustrating inconvenience for many—particularly those relying on their devices for fitness tracking—but for those of us using the Descent Mk3i as a safety-critical piece of dive equipment, this is far more than just an inconvenience.
In my case, my watch entered a boot loop immediately upon returning to the dive center, following three days of technical multi-gas decompression dives (to 50m) in Tulamben, Indonesia. Fortunately, my diving was completed at that point, and I was able to sync my logs before the device became unusable. Additionally, I always dive with a backup computer to track my residual nitrogen load.
But what if this failure had occurred a day or two earlier? What if I were mid-trip with no way to verify my decompression obligations? I can only imagine there are divers elsewhere in the world right now caught in this exact situation, potentially putting their safety at risk due to an unexpected software-induced failure.
Garmin markets the Descent Mk3i as being technical dive ready—a device that divers should be able to trust their lives with. It is also one of the most expensive and premium dive computers available. Yet, how can I continue diving with it, knowing that it could suddenly brick itself due to a glitchy software update that was pushed without my knowledge?
This incident raises serious concerns about Garmin's credibility as a provider of "mission-critical" equipment. For technical divers like myself, this breaks confidence in the product and forces a reevaluation of alternatives such as Shearwater, which has long been considered the gold standard for technical diving.
Garmin must now take immediate action to reassure its diving community that this will not happen again. That means full transparency regarding software QA/QC processes, update deployment protocols, and concrete measures to prevent mission-critical failures in the future. Without this, Garmin risks losing the trust of the very community it seeks to serve.
Has anyone else experienced this failure mid-dive or mid-trip?
