We should take note of that: maybe there is nothing more that can be extracted from our wirst

I don't necessarily disagree with your main point, but sometimes removing features does drive innovation. Not just from a cynical marketing pov, but in reality.

Regarding the headphone jack example: lots of ppl were mad about the removal of the headphone back in the day - one of the arguments was that using wireless earbuds was bad for the phone's battery life.

But due to both iPhone and Android phones removing the headphone jack, wireless earbuds got a lot a better (in terms of battery life, sound quality, and features such as noise cancellation). iow, the headphone jack had to die for wireless earbuds to thrive.

I remember running on treadmills with my phone and wired earbuds 10 years ago. Not only was there the obvious danger of getting the cord tangled up while I ran (if it was too long), I also had mild electric shocks in my ears, due to static electricity build-up. If the cord was too short, I had to worry about the earbuds being ripped out of my ears.

I don't think anyone misses running (or doing other exercise) with wired earbuds. It wouldn't really be practical to have music on your wrist if wireless earbuds didn't exist. Even if manufacturers could somehow fit a 3.5mm audio jack in a smartwatch, it obviously wouldn't be practical to plug headphones into your watch that you wear while you run, unless you run without swinging that arm at all.

As a guy who almost never takes my phone with me when I run, I appreciate wireless earbuds a lot. I also appreciate noise cancelling wireless earbuds in the gym and on public transportation. (Yes, I realize that it's possible for wired earbuds/headphones to have noise cancellation, but it seems that ANC tech got good around the same time as wireless earbuds/headphones got popular)

I would argue that the removal of the headphone jack from phones ~10 years ago is actually the primary reason we have ubiquitous wireless earbuds that are good enough to be used with our watches. Even a lot of the wireless earbuds from ~6 years ago kinda sucked, but they only got better and better.

We can still use wired earbuds/headphones with our phones via adapters if we want to, although it's ofc it's a niche use case now. Gaming and music production are a couple of examples. I still see a minority of ppl using wired lightning or usb-c earbuds with their iphone. And ofc there are mid to high end wireless headphones which have a wired connection as an option.

Nintendo Switch 2 still has a 3.5mm audio jack. They're even adding one to the new wireless controllers.

TenStopardi said:

MIPS wil lbe the new 3.5mm jack?

The big difference is that many users and tech reviewers were outraged about the removal of the 3.5mm audio jack in the past. In contrast, most reviewers and bloggers celebrated the death of MIP.

If you're a Forerunner user, MIP is already long gone. You'll have to hold on to your old Forerunner forever (like I'm holding on to my 955).

The problem with MIP is you have to explain to users why it's good. Ppl have been complaining about washed out and dull Garmin MIP screens which don't look like the marketing images for 10+ years, even in these very forums.

Garmin tried in the past. They had a whole marketing site about "Garmin Chroma display" (MIP) which says it performs great in sunlight without any distracting colour or brightness. Obviously that didn't work.

Now they did a 180 and say that the advantage of AMOLED is brilliant colour and brightness (and it's still ok in sunlight - just turn your wrist bro, everyone does it)

The only way Garmin can market MIP is to use the battery life argument, and they've already figured out how to make AMOLED last long enough for most runners.

I like MIP better than AMOLED, but I absolutely recognize there's very little demand for it (outside of the long battery life use case).

As a runner, the main reason I like MIP is because of the "glanceability". I can quickly glance at my watch while I run and see my data instantly, without waiting for the screen to light up. If I run at night, I can keep the backlight on indefinitely (while AMOLED Garmins don't let you keep the display at full brightness indefinitely). But lots of ppl, including pretty fast runners, don't look at their watch while they run. They just use their watch as a glorified Strava syncing machine, and ofc for this kind of person, it would make more sense for the watch's display to look nice (to others) as opposed to being more functional.

Explaining why MIP is good to a Garmin AMOLED fan (or just an average Garmin user) is the same as explaining to an Apple Watch user why Garmin is good. You really can't, not in a few simple sentences.

TenStopardi said:

How can Garmin sell new watches if they can't measure new things from a wirst?

They could finally fix all the existing bugs. Ha ha who am I kidding?

As a scientist and a person working in the tech industry, I agree that most of the features are shiny names for useless things that nobody will ever need or look at (I was interested in the stamina metric but even if I run regularly ultras, my stamina goes to zero after 20 km...). 

Because hardware got so good in the last years, what companies needs to do is pushing on SW. Also keep in mind SW is what usually brings money! The margins on that is way bigger than on simple hardware. So they need to come up with metrics to attract people which values senseless SW instead of good and reliable features.

We live in the consumerist society that works if people spent. You cannot think that Garmin will start underselling his watches just because it is right to do so 

Said so, I also think that we are scraping the possibilities of tech innovation!! What can we still get from our wrists? My ideas: blood pressure and sugar levels on top of all. But also better ECG and Sp02 that actually works during activities (at the moment you need to stay quite still if not completely paralyzed to get the numbers out).

For me as a person training in the mountains and often at high altitude, a reliable sensor that could give me sugar and 02 level in the blood while my arms are shaking with ice axes would be very interesting.

Also you should consider not only the sensor/HW itself but also the "big data" behind. If companies would really want to invest money, they would have millions of GigaByte of health data to analyze. I would be very thrilled if an algorithm could go through my thousands of activities and identify patterns that are way less obvious: e.g. I did not sleep well so I should expect my VO2 max and/or my lactate threshold to be 3 beats per minute less or more. But this could go far beyond. The watch could tell me the best navigation route from A to B depending on how tired I am, my current HR, how much I drank and what was my average pace on similarly technical terrain in the past month.

I would really like a feature that would consider all my running routes and would calculate to me not only the suggested daily workout (which is trash on Garmin anyway) but also the associated route. Or generally I would like to input some data and get a suggestion of a route given my history.

I think there is so much we could get out of our wrists but no companies will blow all these possibilities out at once... because they need to sell 

And when they add a feature, they will do it on a single watch or a new HRM... I guess the only thing you could do is being critical with the system and spend the 1000$ to enjoy the nature in a nice holiday with your old watch.

JayD said:

I would be very thrilled if an algorithm could go through my thousands of activities and identify patterns that are way less obvious: e.g. I did not sleep well so I should expect my VO2 max and/or my lactate threshold to be 3 beats per minute less or more. But this could go far beyond

This is what Garmin would likely be working on at the moment, and the results of which will be almost certainly placed behind the Connect+ paywall. We'll need to get used to the idea of the watch giving us essential metrics, whilst the insights and actionable outcomes are placed behind a monthly subscription.

JayD said:

And when they add a feature, they will do it on a single watch or a new HRM... I guess the only thing you could do is being critical with the system and spend the 1000$ to enjoy the nature in a nice holiday with your old watch.

Precisely. The Garmin 7 has everything and more I need to train for and run competitive ultramarathons. There's literally not a single additional feature I could ask for which would add a meaningful benefit to the training aspect of the watch.

I'll be upgrading once the battery warrants it, but this won't be for another year or two at this rate. As mentioned, 5G would be amazing as I *hate* carrying my phone around with me, but that's a want, not really a need.

Sorry, I run and hike a lot outdoors every day, and I used to have a MIP Fenix 5+. And the Amoled screen of 965 is way easier to read for me. So there's no use trying to generalize. I agree with FlowState, some of us like MIP, some Amoled. Period.

flowstate said:

"glanceability".

I'm never going to buy a watch I have to shake for it to turn on, even es a "not runner".