Devs at GARMIN, do you test software before releasing it?

These are the times we live in now. Companies release public betas for users to test software instead of hiring testers whom they have to pay. It also greatly annoys me. When an update is released and new features are added, instead of working, previous functionalities stop working. Update 16.22 has many problems. Among others, the heart rate widget stopped displaying correctly and disappears from the watch face after a few seconds. Developers have time. The software doesn't work properly, but nobody cares. They just said they'll fix it in the next update. When is that update? It's unknown. Someday. This is not okay.

I bet most Garmin devs never test their code on the actual hardware. They likely run a simulator environment on a computer, and most if not all testing is done in that environment. Also, most of the testing is very likely automated, so the testing is as good as a set of unit tests that provides the coverage.

What Garmin doesn't seem to have is a group of dedicated field testers who thoroughly test software updates with real devices in a real environment. I know that some other companies like Suunto do have field testers. Instead Garmin releases beta builds to users to try. But without a systematic testing approach, it is unlikely that beta users would find all issues, especially in less commonly used features. And even when beta users find issues, Garmin seems to ignore some of them, even when a lot of beta users complain, and still promote beta builds to release.

4989262 said:

GARMIN cant do stable firmware without problems?

What company can? What company does?

I think there are various problems.
Garmin come to conclusion to give users access to BETA SW hoping users will be happy and help but in reality, most of users just join BETA to have early access to new SW but not contribute in test and even not be able to do proper BUG report. It ends people complains for software quality, devs receiving random reports without proper description.
In my opinion they should start to check people wanted join to BETA.

Other problem is, they want to keep quarterly release cycle they promised and to do that, final release might be pushed with some bugs.

In general, test does that way are not systematic and reliable.

Take a look at the Beta bug report section, many Reports are done, many Ticket Created, but not all bugs are fixed when Public release is pushed. And we need to Bug Report again, Garmin do not do or communicate on those bugs in their roadmaps.

I take many time for us to do that..... :-(

The problem is, only a few people actually use beta software as intended, that is: test it and report any bugs thoroughly. Instead we get posts like this that help no one.

No one is paying us to use the beta and do methodical complex tests (but someone should do that internally). The bare minimum for a public beta is using it for our individual usual things and report issues we find. If those are then ignored and it's expected to send the same issues in again and again and again, it sends the message that our time is not valuable to Garmin. As a result people will stop reporting issues and just move on.

You can't stop something you never actually started doing. This is the case for most people who use beta softwares.

it's impossible to do a test considering the association with all existing cell phones on the planet. The BETA program would be useful, but they should reward those who are part of it.

I was part of the beta program (edge devices) because I liked trying the new features, but after seeing that they leave the problems and abandon the beta versions without solving them, I no longer have faith.

I think that the new functions added to the Fenix 7/pro are used for testing before including them in the next Fenix 8 family.

I would only go back to being a beta tester if they sent me a Fenix 8 for free to test, in which case I could report any anomalies.

When I buy the watch with my own money I don't want to turn it into a laboratory rat.

Anything that's successfully tested in previous gen is naturally carried into next gen product, it's always been like that.