Fenix 6 Series - 19.78 Public Beta

Altimetr issue is still here. Every night altimetr drops to 0 meters in Auto Mode. Autocalibration is "off" (nightly). Is it so difficult to add full OFF mode for autocalibration? I don't need it at all.

Interesting test, thanks!

My results:

Fenix 1 & 2: Altitude drop 62 meters, pressure rise from 1013 (after calibration to altitude) to 1022 hPa

Fenix 5 Plus: Altitude drop 3 meters, pressure rise from 1014 (after calib) to 1020 hPa

Fenix 6 Pro: Altitude drop 9 meters, pressure rise from 1015 (after calib) to 1022 hPa

Actual pressure in hPa corrected for altitude at the time of recording the last readings was 1021.7 hPa.

Fenix 1 & 2: the 62 meters is close enough to approx. 8 meters per 1 hPa to say they derive altitude directly from ambient air pressure.

Something I just noticed: In settings -> sensors -> barometer -> calibrate you can manually enter the altitude and after that, there used to be a prompt to enter current sea level pressure, but that doesn't happen anymore and I can't enter the altitude or back out of the settings dialog, I have to wait until the widget times out. I'll report it as a bug.

Bit said:

Something I just noticed: In settings -> sensors -> barometer -> calibrate you can manually enter the altitude and after that, there used to be a prompt to enter current sea level pressure, but that doesn't happen anymore and I can't enter the altitude or back out of the settings dialog, I have to wait until the widget times out. I'll report it as a bug.

I can confirm this. Barometer calibration is broken...

PS: you can back out of the dialog by holding BACK pressed for 2 seconds to go to the watchface.

Viorel said:

PS: you can back out of the dialog by holding BACK pressed for 2 seconds to go to the watchf

Good one! I'd have to change my hot key assignments; I have long-press Down set to go to the watchface, but Long-pressing Down is used by the calibration procedure to quick-decrease the altitude. (I have long-press Back set up to save a waypoint; I could swap the two, but I'll just wait for a fixed baro calibration)

ShannonA said:

Any tips to get it working again?

Have you tried a secondary master reset? If you cannot get the watch to a power off state to start the process, a 20+ second continuous press of the Light button should get you there.

I had an altitude drop overnight too.  From 293 to 213. Going to change to auto call overnight, then back to calibrate at start of activity, and see if the toggling helps

Today I extended the altitude test to a "Walking" activity, which consisted of 8km driving, 2km walk with the dog and 6.7km drive back to the start. I wore the 6X on my left wrist, 3HR over the back of my left hand and 5X+ over the back of my left fingers, so all watches faced the same satellites, weather etc.. All watches received temperature data from my Tempe on my shoelaces.

For distance tracking the differences are small. For altitude, a little more quirky, with the 6X being worst, but not huge variations.

Here is how distance and altitude varies with time over the drive/pause/walk/pause/drive activity.

Green is the 6X, which drops altitude too much early on and finishes 8m below the starting altitude. Blue and orange are 5X+ and 3HR respectively, both return to the 44m starting altitude at the start/finish point.

Closer shot of altitude shows all watches starting at 44m, but 6X finishing at 36.8m when the others are both 44m.

I've seen better performance from the 6X, usually, but at least it's not out by hundreds or even tens of meters.

When you took that picture, Nightly Calib. set to Off the night before, I believe? I saw this too with FW 19.77 - every night when Nightly Calib. was on, sometimes with nightly calib. off as well. And a couple of times during the day. But with 19.78 it seems to be better (at least for me). We'll see..

Oh, and while comparing the three watches for altitude, here is the GPS tracking comparison.