Venu 3 abandonware?

IDK.  I bought mine back in July of last year. It still has all the features I paid for back then and has gotten a few more to boot. I didn't buy it with the expectation of a boatload of new capabilities being added after the fact.  I've used Garmin Edge units since 2010.  It's the same story.  They make updates, add some features, and then it's on to the next generation which includes new capabilities and features that don't get added to the previous units.  I think all brands in this space do pretty much the same thing.  

It might be said something is just software, but software isn't free. It costs time and money to develop, test, roll out, and support, so has to be paid for somehow. 

I'm not defending Garmin or anything, but this practice has been going on for a long time. You could have known the situation you were getting into when you bought the device.

I agree that the whole situation sucks, but this seems to be their marketing strategy and so far it does not seem that they're getting enough of a backlash to have to care. Of course this forum has similar thread like yours from time to time, but so did the venu 2 and venu 1 forums when a newer model released.

I did buy the Venu 3 with the knowledge that what you buy is what features you'll stay with, but that was still worth it imo. 

Hopefully your Venu 3 will last for some more years and otherwise good luck on your search for something else.

Thanks for your acknowledgement.

The Venu 3 was my first fitness/health wearable, I wasn't aware of the extent consumers being ripped off and exploited here.

Like on Android, phones receive updates for at least 2-3 years, that's OK. What Garmin and, acc. to your words, this market as a whole does, is unacceptable for me. They largely abandon the further development of a piece of hardware after not even 1 year, this is so wrong. And nobody seems to care - consumers don't care, youtubers who review the gear, don't care. They are all well groomed already.

I care, because of this I won't buy another product from garmin. If i didn't buy the watch when first came out these forums would help me to not buy it.

I totally agree with this. Not only they don't bring new features, but they also don't fix  know issues that the device has (voice assistant or call inconsistent connectivity)

I have a suport ticket from june last year and the issue is from march and last time I asked about it they said they that they are actively working on it and I will get notified once it's fixed;))))

Sorry to hear of your disappointment. To be fair, the Venu 3 is about 2.5 years old and has received several updates over that time. As mentioned above, buy something for what it is when you buy it, not on the expectation it'll gain features over time.

Thanks. I am not unhappy with what it does, it still stings to read about really useful additions on the Venue 4, like:

• Health Status (Beta): A new feature that monitors key biometrics—heart rate, HRV, respiration, skin temperature, and Pulse Ox—while sleeping to detect deviations from your baseline.
• Advanced Sleep Metrics & Alignment: Introduces "Sleep Alignment" to track how well your sleep matches your circadian rhythm, along with "Sleep Consistency" to monitor, bedtimes.

Those could be easily brought to the Venu 3 if it weren't abandoned.

everything could be easy to backport or new OS could be "compatible", because all components are the same since years, same CPU since 2021 for all Series ...

but it's Garmin lifecycle management, and marketing choice to limit/stop new features to GEN-1 models.

This policy is not shared anywhere :-(

yes, so it really sounds like exploitation of consumers.

At least the Venu 3 works. The Venu 4 is still freezing if used with Bluetooth music. Very frustrating.