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Garmin Varia App 1.5.0: New "All Clear Tone" Feature

GPLama
over 4 years ago

With the update release of the Garmin Varia mobile app 1.5.0 it appears there was a new feature rolled out and defaulted ON. 

The release notes list only "Bug fixes."

PLEASE PROVIDE BETTER RELEASE NOTES.

I can't stress this enough especially when it relates to a device such as the Varia Radar. Having new undocumented functionality installed and enabled BY DEFAULT is not good practice. The "All Clear" tone is also extremely different to the detection tone, meaning a lot of people simply have no idea what the sound is and what app/service is causing it. 

Having said this - I welcome this update, it's something that should have been there upon release of the 515/315 and mobile app, but don't roll out hidden features we have to discover and debug. Ideally the tone should be similar enough to the detection tone to identify it's a Varia app alert (maybe a friendly/happy tone to indicate "All Clear"). This tone should also be added to Varia compatible head units. 

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    I too am anxious to see what this new feature really is. I still think Garmin should allow all alert notifications from the Edge to be sent BT to your smartphone or be sent to third-party apps that allow customization of the tones or even spoken word. That should also resolve the unaddressed issue of the low volume level from the Edge (830 in my case). If a user did not want to hear all these sounds they could simply turn off alerts to their smartphone. 

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    What? "Bug fixes and performance improvements" isn't sufficiently verbose for you?  Slight smile

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to fallingrock

    I know several people have discussed this and tried the approach I used yesterday but it really worked (maybe too much). Along with the Varia Radar normal connection to my Edge 830 I also paired it with my smartphone's Varia app. I turned up the volume on the iPhone and slipped it in the jersey back pocket. Wow, the tone volumes for approaching car and a different tone for all clear (setting was turned on in app) was really loud and very distinguishable even in wind and other ambient noise. I even had to turn the volume down. Two disadvantages of this workaround is, first the Varia app is a battery hog and ran by phone down to 40% from 75% in 2.5 hours. The other is that you would probably not want it turned on in high traffic areas as it would drive you crazy with the high constant tones. However until Garmin can (or will) fix all the low volume alert notification issue I will be using this workaround for my radar alerts when needed. 

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Its in Garmins deepest DNA to not disclose proper release notes with its software. The same for GCM, they even hide new functionality between "overall performance" and "bug fixes".

    I still think, someone at the dev team responsible for that has to be set free to the market.