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Seems like solar quit working again, plus more boot freezes...

C.sco
over 3 years ago

I don't know if there's something wonky going on with this firmware or what, but it seems like I'm just perpetually having issues with the Fenix 7 since it launched.

A recap for those unfamiliar with my saga:

  • Bought first 7X Sapphire on launch day. After a week, it got stuck in an infinite boot/crash cycle that could not be resolved even with a hard factory reset. Sent back to Garmin.
  • Bought second 7X Sapphire at local store, right out of the box it got stuck on the Garmin logo during first boot, soft reset didn't fix it, did a hard factory reset and then it finally booted. Noticed by the second day that solar charging was not working right - sitting out in direct sun for an hour netted maybe 1k or 2k Lux hours at the most. Returned it to the store.
  • Picked up third 7X Sapphire from a different local store, and this one seemed great. Booted up just fine, solar worked great, everything was good. Then about a week later, solar seemed to quit working. Like the watch before it, suddenly it's only able to get 1k or 2k lux hours at the most, sitting in direct sunlight for an hour. For the first few days it was getting 50k lux hours or more in the same conditions. I did a soft reboot to see if maybe that would help, and it got stuck on the Garmin logo. More soift reboots just kept getting stuck on the Garmin logo. Finally I turned it off and plugged it into my PC, and then it booted ok, but solar still isn't working.

Starting to get kind of frustrated. I've gone through 3 watches now and it sounds like I have to send this one back yet again and get a 4th replacement (but of course, now at this point nobody has any more in stock anywhere).

I don't know if the hardware has issues in the first batch, or if this firmware is just super unstable, or what, but I've just been having nonstop problems with watches failing and frankly I'm considering returning it and just going back to a 6X for a while until this gets sorted out.

/vent

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to cobra1OnE

    I remember this too, some guy posted a video about solar effectiveness and it turned out that if the watch is above 90%ish, the solar charge was almost zero. Could have been 98% I don't remember exactly

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to cobra1OnE

    Unfortunately it's not that, although you are correct that the solar shuts off when the battery is above a certain % (I think 98% or something like that), but my battery was in the 80's at the time. Now it's fully charged back up to 100%, though, so it's going to be a few more days before I can test it again

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to C.sco

    Could it be be a software bug only? i.e. the graph is showing incorrectly but it is charging as expected.Unlikely as the graph has previously showed correct for you but stranger things have happened.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to PoHq
    PoHq said:
    Could it be be a software bug only? i.e. the graph is showing incorrectly but it is charging as expected.Unlikely as the graph has previously showed correct for you but stranger things have happened.

    Certainly could be just software related.

    I've got 3 weeks in which to return the watch if I need to, so I'm just going to keep it for now, and see if anything improves during that time. The rest of the watch seems to be working ok now, the freezing-on-boot issue went away for the time being. So if solar is the only issue, I'd rather have a watch without solar than no watch at all, which is the only other option at the moment.

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    That's unfortunate

    I hope that's just a software bug with the widget 

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    Jesus christ.

    My watch just went completely haywire. I tried to use the flashlight a few minutes ago, and it wouldn't turn on. So I opened the flashlight control screen, and tried turning it on and off from there, and not only did that not work, but it froze and I couldn't exit the control screen. So I rebooted the watch, and guess what - stuck on Fenix 7 logo again. Had to plug it into my PC to boot it to the watchface again.

    Then it booted, and now the Bluetooth connection with my phone isn't working, my watchface has reverted to the factory settings, and my hotkey settings have disappeared. Half the stuff on the watch suddenly isn't working right.

    I'm going to try another hard factory reset and see if that helps. This isn't looking good though. I'm going to have serious problems if the fenix 7 keeps bahaving like this when I'm out in the wilderness and relying on it.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to C.sco

    Did you install any 3rd party apps or widget ?

    What happens to your watches is so weird

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to aryanabdulla
    aryanabdulla said:

    Did you install any 3rd party apps or widget ?

    What happens to your watches is so weird

    Only 3rd party stuff was a simple activity datafield. Factory watchface, factory widgets.

    Indeed, I do seem to have very bad "luck" so far, but I can't imagine how much of it is luck when I've had such serious problems with now 3 different watches.

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    Alright, so....

    After factory reset, everything seems to be back to normal. In fact, even the solar charging is working correctly again, which verifies that it was indeed 100% a software issue. I just stepped outside and got 1.0k Lux hours just holding the watch up to the sun for about 30 seconds - earlier today it would take 10 minutes just to get 0.1k lux.

    Also just did a soft reboot to make sure it doesn't freeze on the Fenix 7 logo again, and it seems to boot to the watchface fine once again.

    Going to take hours to go through and reconfigure all my settings again (thankfully I at least documented the steps I did last time)... hopefully this time everything continues to work properly.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to C.sco

    Well good to know it's software but still frustrating. Hopefully Garmin are on to all these issues.