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

If someone is looking for a watch for serious training, it is definitely better to choose an older model that has refined software than a new one that is being improved. Look - overnight there was an update which, in my case, messed up my wrist heart rate readings. These readings were fine for a year

I'm gonna repeat myself - buying outdated tech is just a stupid idea. Get the base Fenix 7 which is better in every regard compared to Fenix 5 and 6 which sucked at the most important things a sports watch should be good at: GPS and HR and you're getting useful metrics as a bonus which don't exist in old models. You can always disable updates, though it's extremely unlikely an average joe will experience a major bug.

5925888 said:

though it's extremely unlikely an average joe will experience a major bug

This is obviously not true. Average joe is experiencing all kinds of bugs, just one of the latest ones is crashing and rebooting the watch during a workout. Same goes for watch reboot all of a sudden without workout at all. If not being able to record a workout is not a major bug, I do not know what is. 

5925888 said:

it's extremely unlikely an average joe will experience a major bug

The average joe uses maybe 1% of the features of their watch. The rest of us might use 1.2%. If they're a runner, the average joe probably only cares about time, distance, pace, (maybe) HR, and the ability to post their runs to strava. The average joe probably didn't open Garmin Connect even once after the initial setup. If something isn't working right, the average joe might not notice or care. The average joe may have picked a watch based on aesthetics, fashion, social status, or the preferences of their friend group. Can't speak for other groups, but I think the vast majority of runners buy a Garmin because their runner friends have one. Ofc anyone who started running in the past 9 years has a decent chance of wearing Apple Watch instead.

If you look in the right places, you can see plenty of posts where the average joe has noticed that "nothing works right" anymore, including tech. The average joe has probably resigned themselves to this fact. Maybe they will say to themselves "garmin is just as bad as everyone else" (as others in this thread said), or maybe they won't  care if Garmin seems a little worse.

Talking to some Garmin users I know irl, they notice some of the things that suck or don't work, but they don't bother to post on places like these forums, reddit or some other endurance/tech forum.

Personally, my 955 has spontaneously rebooted a few times while recording Basketball activities. I've noticed rare spontaneous reboots on older devices too (I'm excluding cases with obvious causes like extremely cold temperature or very low battery.)

Speaking of Garmin's (lack of) attention to detail:

The average joe isn't going to boycott Garmin (or any other company) because of this. Personally I don't think any of it reflects very well on Garmin.

Not my experience and my friends' experience in any way. We use Fenix 7, 955, Fenix 6 watches, no major bugs whatsoever and we use plenty of features, including all the metrics, navigation, gpx maps, various activities. Not saying ofc that bugs don't exist, they always do, even if one would think a certain software is bug-free, it is not, bugs were simply not found. What i'm saying is, average joe coming to conclusion that nothing works anymore is nothing a person i know has ever experienced. You might think everyone did at some point by reading the forums, but what makes you think it means everyone is struggling with bugs, and those who never posted anything about it are facing same issues? nope, far from it.

5925888 said:

Not my experience and my friends' experience in any way. We use Fenix 7, 955, Fenix 6 watches, no major bugs whatsoever and we use plenty of features, including all the metrics, navigation, gpx maps, various activities.

My experience has been the opposite. I could easily make a list of at least a dozen bugs in Fenix 6 and Fenix 7 software that I observed in the last few years - many of them are in navigation related features and some of these bugs are pretty obvious. So far, Garmin has fixed only one of these bugs, although they have never mentioned the fix in the release notes. 

Let's start with the most basic navigation feature - turn directions. The way it is implemented by Garmin is that it doesn't actually use map data when it generates turn directions. The result of that is that it produces turn notifications based solely on the shape of the course. There may be way too many erroneous turn notifications where there isn't really a turn but just a sharp bend in the shape of the course, which is quite common when trail running. And at the same time it can easily miss an actual turn to another trail when the turn isn't sharp enough, for example when coming to an Y intersection. Also I've seen a number of cases when turn notifications were outright misleading, for example the actual course goes left but the watch tells me about an upcoming right turn.

I've seen it all. I don't want to be picky, but this is the most basic of the navigation features and arguably one of the core features considering Garmin's legacy as a navigation company. The way Garmin has implemented it is that it kind of works in most cases - good enough for most users - but it fails spectacularly in other cases and nobody in Garmin cares.

The impact of the above bug is that I have to disable turn notifications when trail running - otherwise the watch would beep at me every minute when I run through switchbacks. Also I have to stay on the map screen if I want to stay on course. Does it mean course navigation works? Yes, sort of, but the user experience is poor.

This is just one example but I could go on and on. And don't get me started on the routing mode of navigation (Use Map) which just outright doesn't work in any more or less realistic scenario. And it has been this way for years. 

silentvoyager said:

turn directions. The way it is implemented by Garmin is that it doesn't actually use map data when it generates turn directions. The result of that is that it produces turn notifications based solely on the shape of the course

It's technically not a bug as "turn slightly left in 50m" could technically mean "turn your body slightly left". At least that's how I'd argue for my lazy implementation as a software dev.

As a customer though, it's utterly infuriating when on a trail and you're being notified of slight turns every 100m. So much so that I find it unusable as I start ignoring every other notification when it's enabled. You're on a track without junctions, there is no where else to go but follow it around turns. Please don't annoy me with things my eyes can see!

But as someone with some insight as how these features are implemented, it's often a case of getting the minimal viable product out first, collecting customer-use metrics and then seeing how many customers are actually using the feature. In the meantime you direct your engineering efforts onto features (like ECG or 4G messaging) that'll break into new markets and sell more product. If those customer-use metrics from existing features show strong engagement, then you can go back and build the feature out further. If there's just a handful of people like you and I using it, then it goes to the bottom of the backlog - likely never to be worked on, or you'll hand it to an intern as a "cut your teeth" type project. I'm betting the overwhelming majority of Fenix users never use navigation and just use the watch to log runs and workouts to Strava which is why we haven't seen the feature fixed.

Ive got a feature request out for a "turn alert only at junction" mode, but who knows if and when that'll be implemented.

2529455 said:

Ive got a feature request out for a "turn alert only at junction" mode, but who knows if and when that'll be implemented.

The easiest solution for Garmin would be to just let power users manually add turn directions. I would do that. After all,  turn directions are course points and Garmin already has UI that allows users to add course points to a course. 

But overall, perhaps you are right - only a small minority of Garmin users use navigation. I's say even more that a surprising number of Garmin users use their watches as glorified Fitbits - to count steps and track sleep and may be only occasionally record a hike. 

Agree, the implementation of course navigation is an epic fail, especially from a company that has its roots in navigation devices. Free routing software like brouter does an amazing job on this, Garmin is seriously lacking behind. That's why I entirely stopped using Garmin Connect for route planning and am happy now with Locus Map on Android. GC also never updates their maps. Their openstreetmap is more than 4 years old, while competitors are updating theirs monthly. 

Completely agree with you. I also use locus map to create my courses and it has the option to create turns at junctions and to edit them. This is my partial solution to avoid suffering all this Garmin lack of interest on navigation