At the Edge of my patience - More 1050 woes

nogarm-nofoul
1 month ago

Screaming into the abyss that is the Garmin software team.....

I picked up a 1050 as an "upgrade" from an 840. Purchase was motivated by desire for better screen and better software.

The screen IS a huge improvement.

The software is extremely problematic. (13.14 release, not beta)

- Device restarts and freezes

- Map updates can take multiple hours even when connected to WiFi / USB

- Initially I started a map update from the 1050 directly. When I saw it was supposed to take 7hrs, I connected to GarminExpress and started the map update there. When complete, and even after a device restart, the 1050 still had the first update "queued". I had to manually cancel the first update.

- Migrating sensors at initial setup is worthless. It says it completes and all the sensors are listed on the 1050, but the only sensor that actually connects is the Polar HRM. ALL the others won't connect. Deleting/removing from 1050 and adding them again works perfectly. It would be better if the setup process just said "now go add all your sensors. It will be annoying but it will only take a minute." Instead of creating a situation that requires users to troubleshoot.

- Data screens - WE STILL CAN'T NAME THEM?!?!? We can rename sensors but not custom data screens. Oh Garmin, you kill me.

- Virtual Partner - Still can't disable this POS feature? Insanity.

- Screen brightness : Auto mode is a nice idea but invariably the screen winds up being too dark. Setting the brightness manually works, but then you know, it isn't variable. It would be better if you could set the min/max brightness and let the auto do its thing. Or even better, let a user calibrate the desired brightness for different ambient levels. Put that on the list of things that will never happen.

Now the big problem - The navigation and turn by turn directions..... Aside from being a datalogger, navigation is the CORE function of these devices. Unbelievable that this is so bad.

Some examples:

1) Course Routing is really broken - I created a route in Strava. It synced as expected. I rode the first 30 or so miles of the course and it worked as expected. There wound up being a problem with the route that made it impassable and required some going off-course to get around the problem. This was just a real world problem, nothing to do with the 1050. However, it resulted in a fairly significant deviation from the original course. At the time, I didnt think anything of it, and expected the 1050 to continue recalculating the navigation and pick up the course again as I got closer to intersecting it. Instead, the 1050 continued to try to get me back to original course close to where I had to go off-course, not get me to the course at the point nearest my current location. The latter is the expected behavior.

I found my way back to the course (within 1/4 mile), but instead of simply picking it up from that location, the 1050 sent me the wrong direction (now going against the original course direction) on an out-and-back (into a nonstop headwind no less) to reach the point on the course that it had previously chosen. Eventually I reached the arbitrary point it was navigating me to and it found the course. I knew something was wrong, and I should have verified sooner. I finally confirmed what my gut was telling me by pulling out my phone. I canceled the course navigation, and started the same course again. It immediately directed me to navigate BACK to the same location where I had been within 1/4 of the course to join the course. It was too late, I had wasted too much time and energy because of bad directions and I had to abandon my original ride plan.

2) Turn-by-turn on trails is useless - In addition to the above problem of how off-course conditions are handled, this is all made worse when riding complex trail systems with many turns close together. 

- The turn by turn notifications appear sometimes but not others.

- Turn warnings don't update quickly enough. Yesterday I was riding and it said 0.1 mile ahead. I passed the actual turn and it still said 0.1 mile ahead. Then it updated and said I was off course. Multiple turns in quick succession are even worse. It misses those 100% of the time. Even if it gets the first one, it doesnt update fast enough to help with the ones that follow. This is maddening because it means that I have to stop at every trail junction and manually inspect the trail map. Sometimes it will update the distance ahead (400ft, 100ft, etc) - but not always.

- The new feature to provide a zoomed view of the intersection is nice, except it only pops up when I stop at the intersection. It might actually be helpful if it popped up BEFORE I get to the intersection so I don't have to stop.

- The course line is hard to follow

Many of these issues are reported by many other users already. I don't think I'm experiencing anything new or unique. I also don't think I'll be experiencing them for long because this device will almost certainly be returned next week. I've been down the path of "new device. new problems. give them time to fix." --- The trouble is that this isn't a new device. Core functions like navigation should not be riddled with problems.

Ace and Karoo have their own challenges for sure, but surely one of them can get navigation right.

Ok. Rant over.

  • 0 1 month ago

    So I've been trying to figure this out.

    I noticed on a different route that the 1050 was showing a time to next point. This caught my attention because the next point was not a major intersection or turn. Upon later review I realized that it was providing a time to one of the somewhat arbitrary waypoints I used to create the route in Strava.

    To be clear, I never put route markers anywhere specific. I just put them where I need to in order to make the strava route/map builder do what I want. But it raised the question for me..... Is garmin giving some additional weight or significance to these waypoints that get passed in from Strava? Is it possible that when you go off-course garmin is trying to get you back to the "next" waypoint passed in from Strava? --- now obviously this is not desired behavior. The desired behavior is get me back on course at the nearest possible point and then let's continue. Not get me back to the course as early on the course as possible so I can ride as much of the original course as possible. Accept the miss and move on.

    Anyway.... is this possibly what is happening? Should I create my routes and then delete all the waypoints before saving so it will be synced to garmin?

  • 0 1 month ago in reply to nogarm-nofoul

    Its a long long story but have a look for references / descriptions of "course points" which is what you are seeing in the distance to / time to next point. IMO the garmin "Turn Guidance" is more trouble than it is worth and I (and others) just have "Turn Guidance" disabled and just follow the loaded course (from strava or any other course planning software, I prefer Ride with GPS) and place custom course points to break up the course. The advantage of this approach is that it is fixed, the route is not subject to garmins on board issues and it is far less demanding of processor / memory intensive tasks which frequently lead to crashes, freezes, re-boots etc.

  • 0 25 days ago

    These issues and more make me very unhappy with the 1050 compared to previous units.

  • 0 25 days ago

    I did a couple of experiments with route guidance. Unfortunately, it is an unreliable mess. A couple things to share.

    - Removing the course points from my strava route prior to syncing to Garmin alleviates some of the screwed up Garmin behavior, but not all of it. Course recalculation remains uh.... unpredictable. :) -- This makes route creation even more annoying and time consuming. I wish this was handled more gracefully. 

    - Oh Garmin, why do you use two terms interchangeably? I even went and checked the documentation. "Course" and "Route" have identical descriptions. Just pick one. 

    - When the 1050 decides I am off-course, it provides nonsense directions to get back on course, and lags behind what is actually happening so that the prompts become incorrect. Navigation is a real-time activity, there can't be lag if it is going to be useful and correct. 

    example: On a course that crosses a 4way intersection. The defined course proceeds straight. Instead of proceeding straight, I turn left and go a few hundred feet, stop, wait for the 1050 to realize I am off-course, turn around and return to the intersection, turn left and get back on-course. The 1050 doesn't acknowledge that I am back on-course, but it does have my correct position on the map, and begins telling me to make a u-turn to return to the intersection. It is now actively telling me to go the wrong direction to return to a course that I am already on. WHAT?!? It then goes into recalculation which has about 50% odds of being successful or failing (different problem). When it goes into recalculation the navigation screen closes and I return to the primary data screen. When the recalculation completes (if it completes) there is no notification that I am back on-course (no "course found" notification) and the nav screen doesn't reappear. If I manually swipe to the navigation screen I can see I am on course and it is working again. 

    - Visually the representation of the course on the map is terrible. It is hard to see and becomes worse when your previous track overlaps with the remaining course. This is not a matter of changing the line color. The lines should be different designs and be able to be seen concurrently when overlapping. 

    This is such a broken experience. I have already reached the point that I don't feel like I can trust it w/o verifying with my phone. The entire navigation and mapping aspect of the software needs a major overhaul, and quickly. 

    Riding a course with Garmin navigation on a course that I am very familiar with, vs an unfamiliar one, is eye-opening. The errors and misdirection such as the example above are so blatant. I'm at a loss as for how this can be even remotely acceptable to the Edge product team. 

  • 0 25 days ago in reply to nogarm-nofoul

    Try canceling a course when you're off route. That's another similar experience. The 1050 has made me very cynical about Garmin and their product development team.

    It's as if no one actually tests the unit on a bike ride. Look at the placement of UI elements. Sometimes confirmations are a bar on the bottom, a checkbox in an upper corner, or in the middle of the screen. Navigation arrows might be on the top or bottom.

    It's as if some of the UI was designed to be used while holding the unit in your hand, some when the unit is out front of the bars, and some for a lower stem-mounted unit.

    Phone message notification font sizes are crazy. The popup and the preview window you get if you tap on it are a decent size, but if you go to notifications through the "widget", they are tiny when viewed from two feet away on an actual screen. But if I take a screenshot and view it on my PC, they seem like an OK size -- did someone just pick the font size in an on-screen emulator instead of using the device IRL?

    I can go on and on and on, but you're right: how is this even remotely acceptable for the Edge product team? My gut tells me it's because Garmin is a fitness watch company, not a cycling computer company. An internal corporate "cost-cutting" measure is probably to unify the code bases between the "watch OS" and "cycling OS" as much as possible, so they can put even less resources on the Edge product. Then they probably used the Connect app team to design the UI, so we get a jacked up phone-like UI skinned on top of a watch-oriented OS.

    Enshittification comes for everything, it seems.

  • 0 25 days ago in reply to wes-m

    I know I'm just screaming into the void and there is no point to it. I just can't help myself. 

    You are right about all the inconsistencies.

    Sadly, I know the same thing that Garmin knows. There isn't a better alternative. This might be awful, but the alternatives represent an even worse bag of compromises. Kind of remarkable when you stop and think about it. 

    The Wahoo Ace appears to be a hot mess in all regards. 

    I was -this- close to buying a Karoo3, but I realized Garmin has exclusive access to the Trailforks map data. I rely on that data for MTB use. I'm trapped in this ***. 

    I am so dismayed by all this. At least the screen is good and I can read it better. 

    Speaking of notifications and text messages: I have no idea what the conditions are that result in success/failure, but I get text notifications on a hit and miss basis. VERY NOT reliable. In a single ride I will receive some notifications but not others. This was the same with the 840, so maybe it has something to do with the "Connect App" on the phone rather than the EdgeOS? I dunno. Unreliable features are useless features. Better to turn them off completely so you don't ever act on incorrect information. 

  • 0 25 days ago in reply to nogarm-nofoul

    1030+ users seem pretty happy, with navigation, maybe you can find one who will down-grade to your 1050 so you can up-grade to the 1030+ I was always happy with my 520 & 530 but I never use turn guidance, also happy with 1040 doing same despite questionable new software releases. My theory is that all Garmin development is now done by AI bots supervised by the marketing department?

  • 0 25 days ago in reply to L.Rouge

    The new screen is more important to me than navigation. Otherwise, I would still be using an 840. 

    It would be nice if it didn't come down to these kinds of choices.

    Oh well. Back to pedaling I guess. If I never post again, the GarminAI probably sent me down some road and disappeared me. :)

  • 0 25 days ago in reply to nogarm-nofoul

    The new screen is basically unreadable in direct sunlight and has massive glare problems. On a clear day, it's essentially unusable for several hours before and after noon. My unit has well over 1000 hours of screen on time by now, and I swear it has become worse over time. The Edge 830 below is a refurbished unit I got about a year before the 1050 came out - my previous 830 had a halo around the screen after a few years.

    (how the heck do you upload an inline image...)

  • 0 25 days ago in reply to L.Rouge

    We got a bike bell though! How can you not be thrilled!@?