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Is anyone else's 530 becoming less and less useable with each update?

DC rainmakers article calling out Garmin's inability to make their devices actually work is pretty bang on.  At this point if someone told me that Wahoo or another company actively has spies working at garmin sabotaging their efforts I would believe it since that is as good of an explanation as any.  I got my 530 when they were released and I couldn't have been happier.  Unlike my 820, everything just worked.  As far as I was concerned, it was the perfect bike computer.  Now after several updates to both the gps firmware and the OS, garmin have bricked some key functions for me. I am very close to joining the many who have left Garmin for wahoo in search of a product that actually works. I'm not using any of the public betas, but I am using the latest gps frimware as well as garmin OS.

My main two issues are two things that are very important to me that just don't work anymore 1) connection to my iphone and 2) strava live segments.  This couldn't be more frustrating since they worked perfectly out of the box.

1). Initially my 530 synced up perfectly with my phone and everything worked perfectly.  I never run garmin connect during a ride since its worthless and not worth the battery drain, but text messages and alerts from my phone showed up on my garmin which is what I wanted.  Now my phone connects to my garmin thru garmin connect, but no matter what I do, I can't get text messages to show up on my garmin.  I've deleted everything on both my phone and garmin connect and started over, but that didn't change anything, I still can't get any text messages or alerts from my phone to show up on my garmin, despite the fact that Garmin connect syncs up with my phone just fine. If anyone has any solutions please let me know, because if Garmin can't fix this soon, then I am gone.

2)  Strava live worked perfectly initially.  It was annoying as fork that I had to go in and manually set every segment to use the current KOM as the pace, but once i did that everything worked as well as could be expected.  I always run GPS+Glonass.  Then garmin did two things that has really messed up strava live.  Somehow they made the GPS less accurate with firmware updates.  I've tried gps alone, gps plus glonass and gps + Galileo, the results are always the same.  The signal jumps all over the place so my time moves every few seconds from way faster than pace to way behind pace (30 seconds or more).  This wildly inaccurate jumping highlights the other problem.  No matter what I do, I can't simply have the KOM pace as the pace that is displayed.  It jumps all over from KOM to my PR to my contacts.  I have the auto feature turned off.  One of the recent updates seems to poorly attempt to add in a universal pace option, and using that I have moved KOM up to the first choice.  Yesterday I checked a strava segment before leaving and it said that KOM was the choice, got to the KOM and it used my PR as the pace option.  I just can't understand how a feature that has been in place for several generation of edge computers and used to work flawlessly on my unit, just doesn't work anymore.  If anyone has any suggestions on what to fix let me know.

  • That sucks!  Some ideas

    1a. Have you gone into Garmin Connect mobile app -> settings -> Notifications -> App notifications and confirmed that certain apps are granted permission to push notifications to your Edge?  Also, Phone Permissions from that same menu location might have an impact.

    2a. My use of Strava live segment pace is ironically the opposite of you!  I do not want KOM as my target pace, I always want it to be my PR as my target pace.  I've had to do the opposite as you because it seemed that default was KOM as target pace.  There is a setting on the Edge at Menu -> Training -> Strava Live Segments -> Segment Options -> Default Leader Priority where you can supposedly set the default pace.  Although this menu is funky, it doesn't appear to be a "select the default" but rather rank the list by how you want Garmin to do it.  So in your case scroll to KOM and select it and it should make 3 horizontal lines with arrows above and below to appear at the right.  Then use the up and down buttons to change the spot in the priority list for KOM to the top.  Rearrange the others as you prefer.  That's my understanding of how this list works anyway.

    2b. Try recalibrating the compass and see if that improves your gps accuracy.  Menu -> Settings -> System -> Calibrate Compass.  Be outside with GPS signal acquired and then press the select button and do the figure 8 thing that it prompts you to do.  I found this helped my device map behavior when I was not satisfied with what I was seeing.  

  • The only issue I have with mine is sometimes the screen is very dark, depending on ambient light.

    As for features and reliability, GPS accuracy, phone connection etc, it’s working perfectly for me at the moment.

  • Edge > 5.10

    GPS > 2.60

    GCM Samsung S9 > 4.26

    If you are asking about the screen, that seems to be a hardware issue, numerous people have said the same thing, search for “screen orientation” here for the thread

  • I feel your pain.

    I have just sold my 530 because my power meter kept on getting dropped by the device after auto pause.

    When the device came out, it worked perfectly.

    If I went to the status page and disabled it, and re-enabled, it came back instantly, so there isn’t out of battery.

    I got sick and tired of having to do that every time.

    Personally I think the Strava Live Segments on a Garmin are rubbish. I came from a BOLT and they are 100x better on a Wahoo. It was such a step back.

    Anyways, I have a ROAM now and couldn’t be happier.

  • Yes.. 530 has started to freeze during workouts. Only force quit will restart it. First it was good, but not anymore. 

    iPhone connection problems also here. For me it is working most of the time > open Connect app (phone) > switch bluetooth off>on > works. But sometimes even this doesn't help. 

    Garmin, great products with not so great software. 

  • As a former Wahoo user and somebody who rides mostly structured workouts and always uses navigation (planned in komoot) I pretty much gave up using Strava Live Segments - it is just to annoying exporting routes from komoot to Strava, uploading things via the bare bones Strava CIQ app and then having the Edge get all confused during navigation. Example: If you happen to cross the beginning of a Segment, without finishing it all navigational notifications are halted until you manually stop the segment...

    I understand that the underlying issue is related to the fact that Edge units allow for only a single course to be followed and Live Segments are essential mini-courses but there has to be (and as a matter of fact there is) a better way to implement this...

  • For the issue with notification of phone calls & text messages, I believe there is a bug where having auto-pause enabled is interfering with the alerts coming through.  Like you, I also noticed that the notifications for calls & texts suddenly stopped working for me on road rides.  Then I was on an MTB ride and they came through.  The main difference between my MTB & Road activity profile is auto-pause is on for the road profile.  I shut off auto-pause on my road ride profile and the alerts come through now.  Garmin Edge 530 software version 5.10.