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

I think I've just run into the same issue as at the top of this thread with the watch crashing while using navigation. This is the first time for me Fenix crashed and lost activity when doing what I consider to be the core feature - recording a run!

Hey Garmin developers, bugs like this are absolutely unacceptable! I don't care about 90% of fluff that this watch does - all those health and fitness metrics, sleep tracking, golf, and a million of other features that I'll never use. But if it keeps crashing like this a few more times I'll certainly look at other brands. This is the way you lose your loyal users!

I was trail running after work in an area that I am not familiar with. Towards the end of the run I decided to let the watch guide me back to the car using the navigation "Back to start" feature. I finished the run, stopped the activity and saved it, then immediately realized that it was showing me the summary from yesterday's gym strength training session and not the run that I've just finished a moment ago. I looked at the history on the watch - it didn't have the run. Nothing on Garmin Connect either!

Thankfully, when I arrived home and connected the watch to laptop, I was able to locate the run FIT file in TempFIT folder on the watch. I copied it to my computer and was able to upload it to Garmin Connect and Strava. Still, how many users will know how to recover a lost activity?

silentvoyager said:

Towards the end of the run I decided to let the watch guide me back to the car using the navigation "Back to start" feature. I finished the run, stopped the activity and saved it, then immediately realized that it was showing me the summary from yesterday's gym strength training session

That's concerning. Did it reset the watch at the point it was calculating a route back or did it reset at the very end of the run? Actually, did it reset at all or give you any indication that it had failed besides showing you the summary of an old activity?

I ask because it seems like it could have been one of two issues:

- Resource exhausted or some uncaught exception killed the activity (this will be very clear with the activity completely dying and sending you back to the watch face or the watch rebooting)

- You might have had a previously partially complete activity that didn't say for some reason. This may have resulted in it showing a summary screen for an older incomplete activity at the point you've tried to save.

Yeah that's wild. Definitely worth creating a case for.

You had me concerned that it might have reset the watch at the point where it's attempted to calculate a route back - an absolute nightmare of mine as you're theoretically SOL and pretty much lost at that point if you haven't saved your start point.

I'd hope that the watch would ask you if you'd like to resume your last activity in such a situation, but I haven't had it fail on me in such a way yet in order to test.

silentvoyager said:

I don't care about 90% of fluff that this watch does

So you don't care about other peoples issues because you don't need them but wan't us to care about your issues? Interesting attitude.

It didn't ask me if I wanted to resume an activity - that is the first thing that I tried. It just started a new activity instead. The only way to restore it was by connecting the watch to USB and finding the activity temporarily file in the watch storage. I found it by chance by looking in every folder. It was in TempFIT folder. 

KrapfenKringel said:

So you don't care about other peoples issues because you don't need them but wan't us to care about your issues? Interesting attitude.

Isn't tracking activities one of the core features of the watch? If it can't do that reliably for multi-hour activities what's the point of owning this very expensive watch? To count steps and track sleep? There are plenty of other much less expensive devices that can do that nearly as well or even better. 

That's not the point, they point is we should support each other, even if we don't use a feature that is broken.

My watch works fine recording for hours, yet I don't say "I don't care that yours isn't" I also wan't it fixed as this could one day also happen to me.

Yes sure there is low priority stuff like translations or elements off by a pixel, annoying things that can be done but just take a little longer as they should. But a feature you don't care about can be the main purpose to buy this watch for someone else.

silentvoyager said:

This is the first time for me Fenix crashed and lost activity when doing what I consider to be the core feature - recording a run!

Is it possible that the button is malfunctioning, i.e. the button is stuck?

What he probably meant to say and how I see it as well, is that they keep introducing useless stuff like naps and rope jumping to appeal to a larger audience while forgetting the core functionality of the watch (vide crashing or missing HR from the watch face). Things their watches were always know for. I'm really close to simply sticking with one firmware version for the whole lifetime of a product. If it works and the watch is able to do what Garmin advertised in the beginning, I don't wanna risk new bugs with features I won't use.