Related
Options

Do you experience random reboots and/or freezes when doing an activity? If yes, please comment.

ArionK
4 months ago

Hi All!

I've been reading countless comments about F7 watches (also other devices from the F7 series such as Epix, Enduro and Tactix) producing unexpected reboots and freezes. Unfortunately, this has been the case for many users since November 2024 and now it is end of January 2025. As far as I saw this happens while using different activities such as walking, hiking, running, track run, trail run, triathlon and the list goes on.

I witnessed how frustrating this could be as my wife was going through the same. I believe, we did all we could, even more. We did countless soft and hard resets, installed the same latest 19.41 production FW from the watch's developer menu, rolled back to FW 18.16 which appeared temporarily good then failed as well. After having spent so much time and energy, today my wife's loved Fenix 7s Sapphire Solar was taken to the Garmin official store in our location. After we shared all our experiences and explained in detail the actions we did the representative made no questions and exchanged the watch to a PRO model. The representative mentioned that he was not aware of any Pro models failing. Since the community have no official information I thought to create this post and I am asking you all facing reboots and/or freezes to provide the following information below in a comment. Perhaps this will reveal something useful that can be used by the Garmin folks.

1. Model of your device.

2. Software version (production or beta)

3. Short description of the circumstances (for ex.during track running, following a preloaded course while using hiking, etc.)

Thank you for your input.

Top Replies

All Replies

  • 0 4 months ago in reply to megaphylls

    Wich firmware have installed?

  • 0 4 months ago

    ‘Same Here’.

    Fenix 7X Solar
    Software Version 20.15
    GPS: 13.00
    TSC: 3.04.1
    CIQ: 5.1.0
    BMX: 19.1.2
    Sensor Hub: 33.13
    Wireless: 28.27

    I use the activity ‘Walk’ and it has been crashing every time I track a walk from November 2024. Tried not following a course, no effect, still crashes. 7 hour walk in the highlands of Scotland yesterday. 4 hours in - crash. I saved the walk and re-started the log. So the whole walk ended up in 2 gpx files on Garmin Connect. (merged back at base with GPX Studio) I lost about 500m of the route walked. Not happy. My Fenix used to be so very reliable. I always have the map screen on display, so tomorrow I might try a different screen when walking, but that defeats the point of having a ‘map on your wrist’…

    What do competitive runners think of this new feature I wonder?

    I remember my Edge 800 on the bike did exactly the same thing many years ago, but only when following a course. It was fine when just recording.

    Garmin-Laurie said to try 20.13 as they thought it would fix the issue… Still there on 20.15 Thumbsdown tone1

  • 0 4 months ago

    Fenix 7S Pro Solar
    Software Version 19.41

    Just had my second reboot this evening. I was about to start a Trail Run and was just loading the Course at the time. As I was with a group and didn;t want to delay them I didn't bother retrying the load course option. 

    That's only the second occurence in dozens of runs and walks, 90% of which I will be using the Navigate function and have the map on the screen.  

    Air temp was round 2C and battery was around 30%.

  • 0 4 months ago in reply to jha2

    I ski every weekend, latest stable version 19.41, never had a reboot

  • 0 4 months ago

    Era qualche giorno che non avevo riavvi, ne con la corsa ne con la bici, ma oggi durante una corsa si è riavviato nuovamente... Sta' diventando veramente insopportabile!!!

    A quanto pare anche nella beta, molti utenti hanno questo problema, e non sembra ancora risolto.

    Al momento ho 19.41 e non so' cosa fare, se provare una vecchia versione o la nuova 

  • 0 4 months ago in reply to Keith Robertson

    Another crash today, while stationary on the walk being recorded. Merging the 2 recorded tracks back at base I hadn’t lost any data..

    Happens every time since it started sometime in November. Strava on my iPhone, in airplane mode, recored the track perfectly, with over 75% of battery left after 5 hours of walking. Time to sell the Fenix?

    Updated to 20.16 this evening, out again tomorrow, so will see if that is any better?

  • 0 4 months ago in reply to Keith Robertson

    Can you reporting these in the 20.xx beta bug section, along with the crash dump files. 

  • 0 4 months ago in reply to 8532528

    Will do. I can’t get at the crash dump files right now as I am away from home and my computer for a few days.

  • 0 4 months ago

    1. Fenix 7 Pro Saphire Solar

    2. 17.28

    3. The watch reboots during running activities with Multi-Band GPS and HRM-Pro Plus heart rate strap.

    I got my watch brand new, from the official dealer in my country, in November 2024.

    I first encountered a crash on the 18.36 software. After updating to 19.41, there were no crashes for a few runs, but soon, they started occurring during every run and multiple times during long runs (1+ hour).

    After consulting the forums, I decided to backdate to 17.28, which helped for a few months. However, a few weeks ago, the crashes reappeared. Again, it started slowly, once a week, then twice a week, and today, I had three crashes during an interval run training session.

    I tried all plausible software mitigations, such as restarting before an activity, removing previous activities, and performing soft and hard reboots. However, crashes returned even on 17.28.

    I also had a snowboarding trip last week, and a watch did not crash once during 4 consecutive days of 6+ hours of Snowboarding exercises with GPS enabled. This helps little, as running and biking are my primary training and the ones I do most often.

    I now firmly believe that this is not a software issue, but a hardware one. The performance of a watch degrades even after backdating. 17.28 held strong for a while, but, ultimately, it did not help.

    I will be returning my watch and asking for it to be replaced with a Fenix 8, as I don't think Garmin is interested in supporting Fenix 7 anymore.