I don't know if FW2.90 fixed it, or slightly changing my style did, but I now get consistently accurate lap totals. Yippee. But, it still uses a lot of battery. 15% drop in 30 minutes of continuous swimming. Worse than when running with GPS on for an hour. Also, the water contacting the face is activating unintended touch functions. At the end of a swim, the watch "settings" screen is displayed. Swiping it reveals the watch face. Then pressing the button seems to get it back to swim mode where another push stops the activity. Ridiculous. Water contact should not be activating the watch face. Perhaps Garmin should inhibit the touch screen function while swimming. (Garmin, are you listening?)
This topic was discussed in other messages of this forum. Regarding battery consumption, when swimming previously you must set the backlight to zero, I previously had it in 10% backlight and when I swam for at least 1 hour it consumed 20, 30%, setting it to zero, spends 5% approximately. The other problem does not happen to me, I have the side swap disabled.
I don't know if FW2.90 fixed it, or slightly changing my style did, but I now get consistently accurate lap totals. Yippee. But, it still uses a lot of battery. 15% drop in 30 minutes of continuous swimming. Worse than when running with GPS on for an hour. Also, the water contacting the face is activating unintended touch functions. At the end of a swim, the watch "settings" screen is displayed. Swiping it reveals the watch face. Then pressing the button seems to get it back to swim mode where another push stops the activity. Ridiculous. Water contact should not be activating the watch face. Perhaps Garmin should inhibit the touch screen function while swimming. (Garmin, are you listening?)
is vary sad, garmin is not listening :(, so nice watch and so much bugs :(
Ditto what Pegator and Reflejo say. If you turn brightness to 0% and reduced number of alerts, your battery usage should be manageable. Not great, but decent.
I have no problem with VA3 counting pool lengths. HOWEVER, I only swim freestyle/crawl and make a point to get good push off wall at each turn.
Turn the back light to zero for swimming? YGBSM. My point is that I shouldn't have to make changes to my settings before and after activities. GARMIN should make so that the back light DOESN'T com on while swimming. Are people swimming at night to need s back light? Garmin, fix this.
Are people swimming at night to need s back light? Garmin, fix this.
Yes. I sometimes do - I go to an outdoor heated 25m pool that stays open in winter. (I think these are the best swims because you breathe fresh outdoor, cold air -- but you freeze your petunias off just getting to/from the pool and indoors!!)
So, I use the back light -- I set to 10-20% and it's pretty handy. It uses more battery than I'd like, but still I need it to see time/distance.
Bottom line, I want option of having back light for pool swim.
It's a really deception the function of VA3 in swimming mode or in water (pe in the shower). I come from the first VA and the screen behaviour is definitely much better in water conditions than VA3. GARMIN must do something to improve the screen touch performance in water!!
I had to restart the activity three times (one included a full reboot) because the watch stopped recording laps completely. In one case I swam 500m and it recorded 75m.
In the last session, and the last interval, it recorded my 250m as about 475m ...
Mostly I get pretty accurate lap counting, but this has not happened to me twice (once on 2.90).
And it still does not recognize my breaststroke ...
