What happened to the UI?

 or simply they are just really fired all UI designers and let the CEO's 6 years old kid to do the job?

who knows? 

4389125 said:

Flashy colors everywhere, unnecessary gradients everywhere, and an outright terrible hierarchy. Is this a kids toy or a tool watch?

Please Garmin, don't go that way. Fenix ​​users need a tool, not a toy. It's not too late.

i have the opposite reaction to the new look, I love it, much easier to read, the gradients actually help me see the data better (I'm partly color blind), my feeling is, the texts are much more crisp to read... 

i guess it's a personal preference. 

but with each change, there are folks who'll love it, there will be folks who'll hate it. 

that's what makes us unique I guess.

suskozaver said:

but with each change, there are folks who'll love it, there will be folks who'll hate it. 

You're right. The problem is that, for example, in the Epix Pro, Garmin installed more different watch faces and everyone could choose something for themselves. In the Fenix ​​8, there is no variety

wait what? there are 9 watchfaces available. i can't recall how many Epix Pro had, but wasn't it the same or there there?

gaterobs said:

Please Garmin, don't go that way. Fenix ​​users need a tool, not a toy. It's not too late.

Unfortunately Fenix users who use the watch as a tool are in a minority. The majority of Fenix users (who are not on this forum by the way) only care about a flashy watchface and a watch strap. They want a smartwatch rather then a tool. They hijacked the Fenix brand and turned it into a fashion statement, and that's why Garmin is doing all of this. 

Yep, I am also fed up with all those crying for AMOLED, full LTE with call support, SmartWatch features and on the other hand endless complaining in every release cycle for more battery consumption and - see this forum - bad readability of dimmed AMOLEDs or the need for light up gestures to read your time *doh*

AMOLED maps are just so nice compared to MIP. So MIP looses that battle so badly that sorry, AMOLED is the way to go until something better comes along for me. But if people want to use AOD with AMOLED, generally they have bought the wrong watch. Only AOD use case is during diving.

LTE, no need. If I need that I'll have my mobile. It's not so big to take with me (unfortunately there a very few compact phones and they are just getting bigger and bigger, ffs. Make nice compact phones). If the watch would replace my mobile, the LTE is not enough. It would need nice camera to replace the mobile.

What it comes to microphone and speaker. I don't get. Who the h... would like to speak to their watch. I don't speak to my mobile either. Stupid teenagers or something. But kind of easy to see why would Garmin put them. Pretty proven technology and can market them as huge new thing, even people don't want or need them. And can kind of jump into the AI bandwagon as you can talk to your AI assistants with the watch. 

bw said:

I am also fed up with all those crying for AMOLED, full LTE with call support, SmartWatch features and on the other hand endless complaining in every release cycle for more battery consumption and - see this forum

That's because a good portion of Fenix customers buy the watch for aesthetics / long battery life rather than for the purpose of endurance training, so they'll have competing requirements with those who just want a dedicated training watch. Garmin very clearly get this and have designed choices for everyone by keeping the MIP / solar and even no mic option with the Enduro.

Garmin want as many unit sales as they can muster from all classes of people (and it's their fiduciary requirement to do just that). All of these users are coalescing in these forums with their different expectations about the product and what we feel Garmin should be working on. There are going to be 80 year olds complaining that the AOD is too dim for their eyes and 19 year olds complaining that triathlon function might be buggy - both customers believing that their issue should be Garmin highest priority to resolve.

Understand that each customer is correct when expressing their needs because Garmin has intentionally cast the net as wide as possible in terms of customer persona they're targetting.

Case in point:

jmto said:

AMOLED maps are just so nice compared to MIP. So MIP looses that battle so badly that sorry, AMOLED is the way to go until something better comes along for me

Understandable, but I'm a runner, hiker and rider. I like to use my Fenix with it's MIP display as a head unit on my bike and AMOLED simply doesn't work in that scenario because of battery life consumption. Plus on multi-day hikes, the MIP/solar basically 2x's the battery life of the AMOLED given the amount of sun it's getting. MIP is the only display for me!

jmto said:

LTE, no need. If I need that I'll have my mobile

jmto said:

What it comes to microphone and speaker. I don't get. Who the h... would like to speak to their watch

I run for between 1 to 2 hours at a time, five times a week. On these runs I don't carry a phone, I don't carry water, I don't carry anything but my watch and a small pair of headphones because I love the feeling of being free and light. I do also have the requirement for colleagues and family to be able to contact me, so having LTE on the watch would be ideal. In fact, it's so important that I might need to start looking at other solutions if Garmin don't offer an LTE version in the very near future. 

We're both correct here. We just have very different use cases.