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$400 Garmin Venu 3 still can’t display Georgian alphabet in 2025 — where is UTF-8 support?

8226058
8 days ago

I recently moved to Georgia and started learning the language. Naturally, most of my notifications (bank codes, deliveries, contacts) come in Georgian (Mkhedruli script). But on my Garmin Venu 3 — a $400 watch — every single Georgian character just turns into “???????”.

This isn’t some obscure bug. It’s been an ongoing issue for over 10 years across Garmin devices. Meanwhile, even the cheapest $20 knockoff smartwatches from AliExpress handle Georgian text perfectly out of the box.

It’s not like Garmin has to reinvent anything:

  • Georgian is officially supported in UTF-8 / Unicode (ISO/IEC 10646).

  • It’s recognized in the UN M.49 country coding system.

  • It’s an international standard, not some niche workaround.

There is simply no technical excuse in 2025 for a premium international brand to ignore this. Notifications are one of the main selling points of a smartwatch, yet here they’re broken in the most basic way.

Honestly, it feels unacceptable that a $400 Garmin device fails where a $20 no-name gadget succeeds. Is Garmin ever going to fix this in firmware, or are Georgian speakers stuck with “??????” forever?

 Reply of support :

"So I looked into this further and communicated with a more seasoned associate on this one as well. Please refer to the following link. Adding or Changing Languages on a Garmin Wearable or Edge Device Your watch will display all of the languages listed in this link. Georgian is not supported in this list unfortunately. Since our watches do not support that language file it may not show up properly on the devices. I can provide you with our feedback link so you can submit feedback on this issue however I cannot guarantee this is something that will be changed quickly or ever. At Garmin we are always trying to improve our products and we have associates review these feedback submissions quite regularly. www.garmin.com/.../ideas/ "

My take :

I understand Garmin may have little financial incentive to support Georgian, but the fix is actually quite simple, it could bring them thousands of new users, and it would show respect toward the identity of smaller nations.

And on top of it : it would also help me to not think I wasted my money since now I can't see my notifications on my watch...

  • 0 8 days ago

    Do you have any desire to keep the watch? Can you use a different langauge that you know, so at least it is somewhat useable? Personally, if you can't deal with Georgian not being supported, and Garmin or the retailer will not accept a return, then I'd try to sell it. Buy a watch that you've already confirmed supports Georgian. Just checking some, there is the Samsung Galaxy, Amazfit, or Apple Watch. I'm sure there are many more.

  • 0 8 days ago in reply to 0x3D6139

    I mean... I really loved the watch !

    It's just I moved in Georgia expecting no trouble but I got surprised by this as this is very "old-software" type of issue. Very rare these days.

    So... I don't know, it annoys me a bit because other models like Apple/Samsung and so on don't have 14 days of battery, which I love. Also love Garmin Pay too.

    Quite annoying honestly. Annoying enough that I had to write about it. Kinda whiny but at the same time, come on Garmin : you need to add the international standards for characters. It's 2025.

    Anyways, that's how it is. 

  • 0 8 days ago in reply to 8226058

    Support saying this - 

    8226058 said:
    I cannot guarantee this is something that will be changed quickly or ever.

    That wouldn't give me much hope. I'm curious if there are any retailers in Georgia that even sell Garmin watches. I would think not. If they do, what is their response to this unfortunate situation?

  • 0 7 days ago

    Not trying to defend garmin here on this particular issue, but I bet that the problem is not with the lack of UTF-8 support. I'd rather think that the font garmin is using does not have the full set of international characters. If this is the case, then the fix might not be that simple. If the font is made by garmin, then adding all possible characters for all languages is a lot of work (i.e. not financially reasonable for small markets). And if it is an outsourced font, then it's even worse, because the decision to add additional characters would be on the supplier's side.