Next Beta version after firmware 27.00?

muppetman said:

All those features you've listed work, sometimes they do have some inaccuracies though.   My point is, most of us do not care about a slightly inaccurate Altimeter.  The GPS is accurate enough for most of us, yes it's not Military Precision accurate, I agree, especially when running.

Sorry, but I have to disagree.

• GPS is often 8 to 10 % off on my watch, the tracks always being too short compared to other devices. I care about my runs being 10 km long, not 9.2 or even 9 km.
• Same goes for the Altimeter. On my watch, the height gained throughout an activity is always too high by 10 up to 20 % compared to other devices. I often noticed this behaviour when going on a bike ride with friends and looking at their data afterwards.
• The stride length "measurements" of the RD Pod - as a common example - vary between 0.8 and 1.2 m througout the same, lazy after-work run, where I'm definitely not hopping around like a cangaroo.
• The higher battery drain has nothing to do with battery deterioration. It started suddenly with beta versions 26.9x, which is also well documented here. A battery doesn't deteriorate that fast and not because of an updated firmware.

GPS was always sub-par on the Fenix 6, even compared to much cheaper watches, but Altimeter and stride length with the RD Pod used to work o.k. Same goes for battery life and the lagging UI. This used to be o.k., but got much worse with the current firmware version.

My point is that Garmin sold us a premium $ 800 watch that used to work o.k., apart from GPS accuracy, and then introduced bugs that they don't care about and that will obviously never be fixed. Not a good way to keep customer satisfaction high.

53bc6a5b980c4f559a60f7e77fff204c said:

Not a good way to keep customer satisfaction high.

You keep listing issues and I keep trying to explain that those are so small that the majority of customers DO NOT CARE about them. They don't affect them or if they do, they don't notice/care.

I get that you care. You're right to care.  

But the market doesn't. And that's why the F6 was a massive success, as was the F7 and the F8 etc.

Customers love these watches.  You don't.  The other 99% do.

Sorry.

OK, I get that you are a Garmin apologist, who cares more about having that Garmin logo on the watch instead of product quality. 10 or 20 % sensor deviation is a lot to most people, but you obviously don't care. Which is o.k., but I want to have records that aren't completely out of the ballpark. I can get devices that deliver random data for much less money.

Fact is, that Garmin sold us an alledged premium product at a premium price, which delivered - apart from GPS - when it came out. Later, they killed it by introducing software errors that they basically never cared about. All I'm asking for is consistency, which is obviously technically possible, but - as said - Garmin just do not care, now that they have our money and the watch is out of warranty. That's what a Garmin representative basically told me when I talked to her on the phone. Not in those words, but definitely in that sense. So for me, that means once bitten, twice shy for future purchases.

muppetman said:

And that's why the F6 was a massive success, as was the F7 and the F8 etc.

Customers love these watches. 

By the way: please have a look at the Fenix 8 forum. What's being discussed there? Battery drain, lagging UI, CIQ watch faces crashing the watch, data recording errors for multiple kinds of data, ... The list goes on. Lots of issues that plagued the F7 and the F6 as well. To me, that implies that Garmin's software development and quality assurance processes are severely broken.

I've received some messages saying that you should buy the 8 and discard the 6, because it's old, but there are always people who buy things just for the sake of spending money, without even knowing if it works as it should or not, because they're not really interested in the features but rather in having a new toy on their wrist.
I don't like being Garmin's free beta tester and buying a new model every two years.
I think it is clear that nobody wants NEW features in this watch (even if it could have them) but rather that the faults it still has are corrected, if they can be corrected.
I totally agree with muppetman that for most people almost everything works, almost perfectly, but the only thing that is being pointed out is that if there are "still" known faults, then they should do what they can to correct them. I don't think that the fact that there is a new model that "they say" does not have that fault is an excuse for not correcting them.
Updates should be an exception, not a necessity, or even a common practice: I sell the product as is, with flaws, and then I will correct them over time.
Is it a great product? Sure; that's why I bought it. Do I have to keep quiet if it has flaws? No. Can we ask the brand to correct the flaws it still has? We can, and they should correct them; they shouldn't have waited so long.