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

I notice a lot of feedback that. 

I notice a lot of feedback that. 

As per a statement from Garmin in another thread. I guess we know why some folks are having the issue and others like me aren't.

How the heck wasn't that picked up in Beta or by a Garmin employee actually wearing the watch on a run? I hope it results in a couple of uncomfortable conversations at management level over there.

Update April 23, 2024

Our engineers believe they may have identified the route cause of this concern. They have found that this appears to be related to a bug with the Solar widget on the watch face. They are working on a software update to resolve this. In the mean time, they are recommending changing the watch face to exclude the solar data. 

If you do this, they would love to receive feedback as to whether this does or does not resolve this for you. Feel free to reply here, or contact me via Private Message.

Epix does not have solar yet some epix users have similar problems.

It was not picked in beta because they do not test the software adequately before release and because they keep publishing software with know bugs (reported in beta).

Hopefully they will fix the solar widget which was broken since the beginning sometimes showing last minute intensity, sometimes something different. Had to touch the watch face to properly update the widget and it drove me nuts.

WAYYYYYY WORST.

BTW, how are you liking the latest Garmin Connect update ?

At least the simple things like the weather widget are working. 

4989262 said:

I dont understand why Connect IQ apps can slow down or make errors in garmin os, they are not allowed to run in background and they dont interfere into system, apps are not working in the same way as for example hardware drivers in windows

It’s because Garmin devices don’t have a lot of hardware resources (in order to save on battery life), which means they don’t have a general purpose OS like WatchOS, WearOS, iOS, macOS, Windows or Linux which provides the type of crash protection and process scheduling that you’re used to.

This is why, in the past, it was possible for a badly-written CIQ data field to crash the entire watch and put it in an endless boot loop that could only be escaped with the 3-button sequence that resets your watch to factory defaults by erasing all data.

This comment also explains why CIQ apps cause extra battery drain compared to anything that runs natively (built-in) on the watch.

https://the5krunner.com/2022/04/29/garmin-epix-2-review/#comment-107584

Check out this podcast. https://cppcast.com/brad-larson-cpp-watch/

If you follow the tech stack stuff at all, it becomes amazing that these watches do so much and franks work at all. Garmin has a drastically simplified architecture relative to Apple. It’s not really based on a operating system or barely an operating system — nothing like the Unix model in Apple WatchOS or Google WearOS.

– no memory protection at all
– no processes
– no kernel protection or kernel vs user concept
– everything is a single process with threads
– everything is C and C++
– The connectIQ interpreter is a thread running in this stuff (and an interpreter is expensive in terms or compute which means battery overhead)
– basically any programming error can hang or crash the watch

It’s a punishing environment for the Garmin engineers to work in. But on the other hand that is how they get so much more battery life than WearOS and WatchOS. I’m now astonished that ConnectIQ works at all, let alone as well as it does.

No issues with it. The differences took some getting used to but happy now.