There is a mistake in the 15.23 Announcement

Smart Recording main purpose was to save storage space way back then when the devices had something like 32MB (not GB) to store activities. Now a days this is far less relevant and I would assume people prefer a more accurate trace and a smaller one.

You are correct, and A Weatherall's reply in the One Second Data Recording thread seems to say that any of us who use a power meter have been getting one second recording no matter what we have set for Data Recording.

By the way, my Edge 1040 produces .FIT files that are about 25% smaller than my Edge 1030 Plus.  So storage capacity is even less of a problem than it ever has been before!

It was done because finally someone realized that setting „smart“ recording as an default was messing up a lot of people tracks. Many new users would have never been diving deep enough into the menus to understand that it was enabled and what it meant. 

I think the next step should be to delete it from the watches. And I mean deleting it iV total from every firmware. 

I can understand the reason of accuracy and that the store is not a problem because the recent devices have a lot storage space. But I think they should allow the smart option since it is one of the solutions they give to save battery and this could be important for some devices with less battery capacity. I think they should reconsider this.

The solution could be to set once per second as a default. But it shoudn't necessarily mean to delete the smart option.