7S Pro Sapphire Solar
watch for 900USD,
and GARMIN cant do stable firmware without problems?
Why it restarts itself while navigating?
Should I go for other brand?
Or do I have to buy marq series to have something solid?
Why you treat people in this way?
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…
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…
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…
OK, speaking about testing the software let me give an example of experiencing at least 5 software / UX issues in a single day when I did a large ultramarathon race.
1) I got up very early - way before the end of the sleep window. I turned the sleep mode off manually because it is very difficult to see the screen (such the current time) when the watch is in the sleep mode. However, shortly after that it turned it back to sleep. I kept manually turning the sleep off via the controls menu, but the watch kept flipping it back. That made it difficult for me to see the time and I was really worried that it would block me from the starting the race as has been reported in this forum. One would think that it is quite reasonable that if someone manually turns the sleep mode off - they mean that, right? Has Garmin ever tested that?
2) During the race I noticed how poor accuracy of Climb Pro was. Beginning and ends of climbs were routinely 0.1-0.2 miles off. Often I would be already climbing for more than a minute and it would tell me I am still on previous descent. I don't know what algorithm Garmin uses but it doesn't work that well for trail running. It seems to arbitrarily swallow some pretty substantial climbs, even if that is a couple hundred feet, but then it might show an almost flat part of the course as a climb even though it gains something like 45 feet in 0.6 mile. The sum of all climbs in Climb Pro is 10,800 feet. The actual total climb was 12,500 feet, so Climb Pro missed 1,700 feet out of that.
3) Poor rendering of the elevation profile. It turned there were two fairly substantial climbs at the end of the race - very substantial when you are at 60+ miles into the race. Can you see them on this screenshot? I was looking at the remaining 2247 feet of climbing and wondering where they were. But at the end that turned to be true because the total elevation gain was about 12,500 feet.
Also note that much off the total distance is. The course imported into Garmin Connect was 60.86 miles after importing even though the original course was closer to 63 miles. The actual distance was almost 65 miles according to the watch. During the race the watch could have updated the distance based on the progress, but it got stuck with the original distance.
4) Up Ahead quit working towards the end of the race. There should be two more aid stations in the space where there is that blank space. That was super frustrating because I really needed that information after hours of running and a multiple hours still to go.
5) The Stamina graph turned out to be completely useless. You'd think with all the training I did for the ultramarathon and the pattern of training, it would understand how long I can endure. But during the race, at about 7 hours the remaining stamina dropped to zero, and I kept going for another 9+ hours after that. Now, after the race the watch shows my stamina at 12+ hours, but what usage it has now?
