19.18 Cannot use touch at end of activity

As far as I understand, in the most recent firmware the watch uses the activity's touch settings until the activity has been saved. You can use buttons to select effort and feel. That's how I always do it because you'll have to use buttons to select "save activity" anyway.

forums.garmin.com/.../19-18-touchscreen-in-self-evaluation-disabled

Thank you for pointing me to that thread! I hope they can bring back  touch for the self evaluation, using the buttons is a bit cumbersome IMHO.

To be clear, you have to use buttons on 19.18 even to save, or resume later, or discard the activity. I don't have self-evaluation turned on and don't care about it, but I'd like to be able use touch for all parts of an activity, including its ending, when I have it enabled.

rogerinnyc said:

To be clear, you have to use buttons on 19.18 even to save, or resume later, or discard the activity

In a recent FR955 beta firmware, this behavior was removed. 

I’m guessing the same is true for FR265, considering that Forerunner 255/265/955/965, Epix gen 2 and Fenix 7/7 Pro all have similar software (and similar bugs).

To be clear, on my FR955, touch was previously disabled in the activity pause menu (with Save, Discard, Resume Later, etc.), regardless of activity touch settings, just as you said. If you tried to use touch, the watch would display a message saying that touch is unavailable here. But starting with a recent FR955 beta, this no longer happens - touch is available in the pause menu if touch is enabled for the activity.

I think the history here is that this behavior was added only for Forerunner devices, and once Garmin decided to merge software for various lines like Forerunner and Fenix, a lot of the Forerunner-only quirks have gone away.

Personally I think it’s a step backwards (in this case) bc, over the years, the most frequent complaint I’ve seen about Garmin touchscreen watches is that people accidentally saved an activity (due to rain, long sleeve, or some other unintentional touch).

Can’t speak for anyone else, but this change means that I just disable touch on all my outdoor running activities now.

Im actually quite pleased with the ability to use touch on this screen.  In this implementation however , you do have to take two steps to save or discard , press discard or save and then click on accept so its less of an issue than just one press/touch would have been.

S.M.R. said:

In this implementation however , you do have to take two steps to save or discard , press discard or save and then click on accept so its less of an issue than just one press/touch would have been.

Oh right. Now I see that when you press Save via touch, there is now a confirmation prompt. Thanks for mentioning that, I actually had no idea haha.

I also see that Fenix users are complaining about this haha. (Note that there is no confirmation for Save via button. For Discard, there is a confirmation whether you use touch or button.)

I guess this is compromise that Garmin made, so they could please both parties: ppl who are mad about accidental saves and ppl who want to use the touchscreen in the pause menu.

My only comment is that I think it still might be possible (in theory) to accidentally save your activity:

- due to rain or long sleeve triggering both the Save menu item and confirmation (idk if this is possible)

- if you were about to press Start to resume your activity, but an accidental touch or rain triggered Save, and you instead press Start on the confirmation screen

I always thought that if you triggered Save or Discard via touch, then the confirmation action should become a swipe (with no option for button confirmation). But that might be too confusing.

This kind of stuff is def part of the challenge of a hybrid button / touch interface where touch is optional. 

Well, here is my vote for the implementation they have in the most recent beta 20.18. Touch is re-enabled in the pause screen and you have to confirm to save or delete. Honestly, I don't get the people who are worried about accidental saves or deletes (even with two taps required). They should just disable touch in their activities screens (thank you FlowState!), as opposed to Garmin deciding to take away an important (and UI consistent) touch feature for the rest of us.

rogerinnyc said:

Honestly, I don't get the people who are worried about accidental saves

Bc accidental saves have happened many times in the past with Garmin touchscreen watches. It's happened to me in the past, too. Ppl have been complaining about it for years. Seems that the most common complaints are about accidentally triggering the touchscreen via long sleeve or rain, whether it's a watch released 9 years ago, 3 years ago or last year. So Garmin hasn't been able to get rid of this problem over the years using some hypothetical algorithm to reject sleeves or rain. But then again, even if they did, there would still be the problem where the user actually touches the screen with their finger, but unintentionally.

People have also been complaining about data fields changing "by themselves" on the newer touchscreen watches. Ofc this is bc the newer watches allow you to change fields by long pressing them.

So there's a reason Garmin turned off touch in the pause menu - they didn't do it just to annoy ppl out of some theoretical concern for a hypothetical situation. Clearly they did it bc there's no way to completely solve the problem of unintentional touches (whether it's due to human error or something else, like long sleeve / rain).

My concern about accidental save/delete with confirmation is purely theoretical tho. I think the solution of requiring a confirmation when Save is triggered by touch is pretty decent. I just think that requiring a swipe to save or discard (when those functions are triggered by touch) would be the most bulletproof solution possible.

No different than how important functions on a watch or phone are typically triggered via a swipe as opposed to a simple tap, like answering a call while the phone is locked, or turning off the watch or phone. The common denominator is these are functions you don't want to trigger by accident.

rogerinnyc said:

They should just disable touch in their activities screens (thank you FlowState!), as opposed to Garmin deciding to take away an important (and UI consistent) touch feature for the rest of us.

Bc maybe they want to use touch during an activity but have zero chance of accidentally saving or discarding their activity due to inadvertent touches?

It's similar to the reasoning behind having a "Map Only" option for touch during activities. Some ppl prefer the convenience of using touch to pan the map, but they don't want to deal with unintentional touches in the rest of the activity (especially if their data fields can get messed up.)

Fenix 8's new UI goes even further and allows you to swipe to temporarily enable touch in an activity, which proves that they think some users want to be able to have touch disabled most of the time, but also want a way to easily enable touch on demand. This reminds me of how some users would disable touch during an activity, but use a hotkey so they could quickly enable touch on demand. Garmin basically took that use case and integrated it into the UI (without requiring a hotkey).

Yes they could give an option to en/disable this part , we all want something a little different :-)

Well I understand why Garmin doesn't want to make everything an option. It increases product complexity (for both the devs and the end users) and it results in more stuff to be tested (and more stuff that can break).

It's also the case that most users won't change an option anyway (assuming they know it exists in the first place), so it's always important to choose sensible default behavior. To take that a step further, it's even better (from a certain POV) to just not have the option and implement behavior that works well for most ppl. That's what it seems they've tried to do here.

Ofc the new behavior won't prevent your activity from accidentally being resumed due to inadvertent touch, but that's the kind of thing which is probably seen as a non-catastrophic error (you can just pause the activity again).