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735XT Open Water Swimming stops counting meters but time continues

Hi Everyone,

In the last three open water swims I've done my 735xt has recorded the first four laps fine and then stopped counting meters but the time continues. The distance for each lap is approximately 500m and the watch seems pretty accurate during the first four laps but after that it just stops recording distance. Yesterday it recorded 2080m and last week it was 1875. Both should have been around 2500m. On Garmin connect, for yesterday's swim, Garmin connect shows my splits as:

1 - 10.22 - 500m

2 - 10.37 - 500m

3 - 10.46 - 500m

4 - 11.13 - 500m

5 - 15.02 - 80m

That last one should have been another 500m split and some time and meters to get back to the shore.

If this was a one off I wouldn't worry about it but given that it's been the last three times in a row it's a bit concerning. Any advice?

Thanks

  • I'll just add that I bought the watch last year and it worked fine for the open water swims then.

  • Do you change swimming style for the last 500 meters? GPS doesn't work when the watch is constantly submerged like for example during breaststroke.

  • Hi tmk2, no, it's front crawl all the way.

  • Hi. Did you find what the issue was? My fenix 5 started doing the same. 

  • Hi, not really unfortunately. I have some circumstantial evidence that it was to do with temperature as it didn't seem to happen once water temperature rose above about 20 Celsius. Below that it appeared to be hit and miss. In all other respects my garmin still appears to be working fine. Unfortunately, due to  lockdown in  the UK, we've not been able to swim this year so I haven't been able to collect more data. 

  • Hm. It’s definitely not the temperature for me as on time it was 15 and another time 22, there was a time in between when it worked fine and the temp was 19. The other problem that I have is a sticky stop/start button but it has been for a while. I don’t think it’s related. 

  • Hi, I bought a 735xt during lockdown (in the UK) and have been Open Water Swimming quite a bit the last few weeks (lucky to live near some OWS venues that got the green light end of May).

    One of the venues where I swim has a 500m loop (60 minutes session) but has a 1km loop for a 90 minute session. On the two occasions I've had this issue - it seems to stop at roughly the same place in the 1km loop on the second lap.

    However, I've swum further than the distance where it cuts out at other venues and on the 500m loop. It's almost like a satellite cuts out at a specific time on a Thursday night!

  • Ah, obviously not temperature then. When I can I'll get back out and see what happens. Thanks for your info.

  • Last year I was swimming on Sunday mornings and Thursday evenings. I can't remember whether I had issues on just Thursdays. I'll see if I can find out.

  • Same Issue,

    My Garmin Forerunner 735XT firm v9.70 was bought online (Wiggle), open water swim, GPS+Glonass, 21ºC.
    I swim 3200 meters normally and I always make stops at the same places by pressing the "stop" button, then I resume the activity by pressing the "Start" button and many (not all) of the times stop counting the meters while continuing to count time. At the end of the activity it shows me 52min and 800m, crazy!

    I just reset to factory defaults to test it again only with defaults options, I'll tell you