F7 Series - lack of Feature Update compared to FR x55/x65

Honestly, I think all major features will now be reserved for the Fenix 8 family.  For sure they will keep bug fixes and improvements on the F7/Epix.  But it's not in their financial interest to bring new 'wow' features to F7/Epix 2 watches. Crappy for those owners of course.  They want people to upgrade ASAP.

why not

but FRx55/x65 V3/VA5 are from the same generation like F7 Series

Problem is keeping customers

net1994 said:

I think all major features will now be reserved for the Fenix 8 family. 

I share that opinion.

This explains why me fenix 7x pro suddenly gave me an running LTHR suggestion without me do the actual LTHR test.  No complaining about that particular piece of the chart.

Certainly appears that way doesn't it?  Unfortunately I just upgraded from a Forerunner 245 to a fenix 7x pro in June.  I'll be skipping the 8 and waiting for fenix 9 at a minimum.

but there was no Forerunner released recently, right?!

I would guess that there are teams for different product lines. Garmin recently released new Fenix with lots of changes (at least on UI) and there is probably still a lot to polish. So they need to prioritize. If other (older) products like FRx55 got the update, the "older" Fenix/Epix will get that probably too. There is probably no capacity to fix all of them at once...

The LTHR detection on FR955 is changed such that you can't accept or dismiss newly detected LTHR anymore, they are automatically accepted. You can still set LTHR manually though, which turns autodetect off. There is no LTHR-test-workout anymore.

Updates tend to bring more AMOLED-oriented elements (black backgrounds, small UI elements) to the FR955 which is MIP. Maybe that also happens to the F7 range? These UI changes are not listed. Make sure you have an update file to go back if you don't like the changes.

I don't remember accepting the LTHR, but I did click on the watch notification like I would for max HR.  The difference was that for max HR I usually get a 'do you want to accept this' message on the watch (pre 19.34).  None of that happened for LTHR, so I think it's now auto accept like your FR955.

I just tried to locate the LTHR Guided Test and it's also missing/no longer available on my watch.

Seems like the same changes you've noticed have been made on the F7x Pro as well.

It would be nice if the actual change log for the firmware updates was posted somewhere easy to find.