Feature Requests and Suggested Improvements

Options for Optical Heart Rate Sensor

With FW 3.20 / WHR 2.30 reading frequency of 24/7 heart rate apparently has been greatly decreased.

While now battery life will probably be better, it now feels like its not enough samples to give a representative picture of all-day heart rate. Concerns have been expressed, like miscalculation of calories, missing the "right" RHR...

A good idea would probably be to have several options for the built-in optical HR sensor, having a seperate setting for activities and for 24/7 monitoring:

Activity HR Monitoring (running, cycling, other)

• ON (override by chest strap still possible)
  
• OFF
  

All-day HR Monitoring (24/7)

• OFF
  
• ON, high reading frequency (15min at rest as up to FW 3.13b)
  
• ON, low reading frequency (30min at rest as of FW 3.20)
  
• ON, during sleep only (either by recognized or user defined sleep window) for users only interested in RHR, for this I would prefer 15min sampling
  
• another option could be, to let the user define themselves at what rate the sensor should sample (e.g. define every x minutes at rest)
  

Like this the user could choose himself what is important to him, better battery life vs. more (representative) HR data and everybody would be happy.

EDIT 2015/12/27: extended the options for 24/7 HR tracking.

I agree with philippe.berini that 24/7 HRM needs to either be user configurable or the adaptive algorithm needs to be much more aggressive in v 3.20+. I'm sticking with v3.10 until this is fixed.

Also, I realize that the optical HRM has inherent drawbacks, but I feel that the sudden drops in measurements could be easily detected and smoothed over. For an example of what I'm talking about, look at the attached image (biking). When the optical HRM loses a lock on my HR, the HR drops dramatically...faster than my heart rate could possibly recover. It seems like it would be fairly trivial to detect such drops in an algorithm on the watch and not allow the HR reading to decrease faster than some rate. This wouldn't solve the issue, but it would reduce the impact at least, and is trivial compared to trying to develop and algorithm to entirely hide the dropouts.

My Feature Requests for the FR235

Heart Rate Monitoring

• option to turn off the 24/7 monitoring (see above)
  

Data Screens

• a third user configurable data screen
  
• T-Split datascreen layout with a half split data field at the top and two data fields at the bottom of the screen
  
• a second configurable information on the auto lap information screen
  

Hotkey

• start synchronization when holding the back button
  

Menü

• enter general setting by holding the up button in then main watchface not as part of the activity settings
  

Smart Notifications

• option to turn off smart notifications when connected via bluetooth
  

Foot Pod

• cadence, stride length and frequency during outdoor run activity from foot pod
  

Others

• information when daily activity/step goal reached
  
• low battery information or remaining activity time when starting a new activity
  
• Recovery/Training status on the main watchface
  
• synchronisation icon (two arrows) on the main watchface not only on the activity screen
  
• sunrise/sunset time on the main watchface like you can show on the Fenix 3
  

Data Screens

• make data screen for downloaded trainings (my trainings) configurable. I was missing the heart rate when doing a HR-zone based training and constantly needed to switch between the HR page and the training page.
  

Menu

• Agree, everything that has nothing to do with activities should be accessed by a long press up from the watch face. Hence, logical separation of settings for activities and other/general settings.
  
• Long press on back button brings you straight back to watch mode. Useful when navigating through many levels of menu settings. (should probably be disabled during an activity)
  

With FW 3.20 / WHR 2.30 reading frequency of 24/7 heart rate has been greatly decreased.

While now battery life will probably be better, it now feels like its not enough samples to give a representative. picture of all-day heart rate.

A good idea would probably have several options for the built-in optical HR sensor, having a seperate setting for activities and for 24/7 monitoring:

Activity HR Monitoring (running, cycling, other)
- ON (override by chest strap still possible)
- OFF

All-day HR Monitoring (24/7)
- OFF
- ON, high reading frequency (as up to FW 3.13b)
- ON, low reading frequency (as of FW 3.20)

Like this the user could choose himself what is important to him, better battery life vs. more (representative) HR data and everybody would be happy.

the options like that are "MUST". it will make FR 235 a better one than any other 24/7 tracker / watch (including Apple Watch)

Totally agree with the user options on all day heart rate tracking. One of the main reasons I bought this watch was for all day heart rate tracking.
It's the only "runners" watch so far that implements this feature so it's a shame to see it so crippled in the name of better battery life.
I'd much rather have more accurate tracking of HR and accept that I might have to charge my watch every couple of days versus not having it and having to charge my watch every 4 days. But other users may want the opposite - so give us the option!

A couple of other things I'd like to see, based on experiences using both a Fitbit Surge and a Tomtom Spark.

Alarms
I'd like an option to set different alarms for different days, not just the option to repeat on weekdays or weekends.

Alarm Snooze? Where is it? Personally I don't use snooze but I imagine a lot of other people do so it's a weird omission.

Goals
Give us the option to set other parameters as the main tracking goal. For example on the Fitbit Surge I used to have a target calorie burn of 2,500 kcal which was much more useful to me than a 10,000 steps goal.

Smart Notifications
I get a million emails a day thanks to work, plus a bazillion facebook, instagram and snapchat notifications. Okay maybe I've exaggerated that slightly but you get the picture. Not only was the constant buzzing on my arm annoying it was also clearly draining my battery far more than any heart rate tracking was. I want those showing up in the phone notifications center though so I wouldn't disable them just to get a few select notifications through to my wrist.
I don't know how Fitbit did it but choosing the "phone calls only" option on there also included receiving notifications for text messages/iMessages. [Edit] In case the iMessages reference didn't make it clear - I have an iPhone not an Android based phone so I can't pick through Garmin Connect what notifications I receive. [/Edit]
But I really miss getting notifications on my watch for when I receive messages. So it would be cool if that could be implemented.

Other Fitness Profiles/Activities
I'm pretty nerdy so I love categorizing my exercise activities.
It would be nice if I could have the option to create a profile for each type of exercise profile, instead of having to record everything under "other" and then edit it later.

But even the editing needs to be improved - I find it rather odd that I can classify an activity as "wingsuit flying" yet I don't have the options to select "bootcamp" or "crossfit" or "group exercise" for example. This is more of a Garmin Connect rather than Forerunner 235 suggestion, but still it should be included :)

A number of these ideas are nice, but I think we can all agree philippe.berini's #2 post is a must-have. I encourage everyone to contact Garmin directly referencing his idea/post. This is the form I used, as it allows you to select the "Into Sports" "FR235", presumably getting us directly in touch with the 235 support/development team.

Edit: Garmin responded and indicated that the "Have an Idea" link is more appropriate for this request:

http://www8.garmin.com/contactUs/ideas/

A number of these ideas are nice, but I think we can all agree philippe.berini's #2 post is a must-have. I encourage everyone to contact Garmin directly referencing his idea/post. This is the form I used, as it allows you to select the "Into Sports" "FR235", presumably getting us directly in touch with the 235 support/development team.

https://support.garmin.com/support/sw/escalateForm

Good idea, however I suggest we wait a day or two before we go ballistic ;) Just to see wheter our perception of greatly reduced reading frequency holds... (for my part I want to have a couple of recorded days to compare)

Good idea, however I suggest we wait a day or two before we go ballistic ;) Just to see wheter our perception of greatly reduced reading frequency holds... (for my part I want to have a couple of recorded days to compare)

Oh, I completely agree that there's no need for taking a negative tone. But regardless of the actual reduction in sampling in 3.2, whatever that my be, the need to allow customization from "only while in activity" to "every minute of the day" is a must-have for this watch to be a success. I suspect Garmin is beginning to realize that, but as $330 stakeholders, it is our job to put them on the right path.

Audio Alerts (Heart Rate Zone)

I'd love to have audio alerts for my Heart Rate Zones (too low, too high) just like the audio alerts for laps.

Especially when I'm running with ear phones I'm not able to hear the beeping of the watch nor feel the vibration if I'm in the wrong heart rate zone; and with 5 degrees Celsius here in Austria it is not that easy to constantly keep an eye on the watch behind layers of cloths.