LTE connectivity.

I finally found the time to have a chat with a Garmin representative. I had a conversation with her regarding the LTE connectivity in my area which is south of St. Lawrence River in Quebec Canada. So basically there is nothing they can do about that. Your cell phone might work in an area that the Garmin device doesn’t work and your Garmin device can receive a signal in an area that your cell phone won’t receive anything. She said the carrier they are using is AT&T. At least for Canada they are not using any other carrier. I will put a copy and paste of her responses of the chat.

Michelle: Our watches require a full 4G LTE connection for the LTE connection to be active and functioning. Even though your phone may have connection to the towers, that does not guarantee connection with our watches as your phone and our device may have to communicate to different towers based on the difference between your cellular contract and the service that we are able to provide. This means that there are times where your watch may not have connection while your phone does, and there may be times where your watch had LTE connection while your phone does not connect to the cellular towers at all.

This is unfortunately not something that we have any control over, and it is likely that the more remote areas will have a harder time connecting via the LTE connection as the towers are typically more sparse make connection not as easy to find.

So she finally said there was nothing she could do to solve the problem beside of unsubscribing. That’s unfortunate for Canadians customers. I know they are working in the background with the carriers for the coverage. I think they should just Add a few more carriers in the Garmin plan so we could have a better coverage it wouldn’t bother me to pay a few extra bucks to have a better coverage because right now this is totally useless for me. If I go trail running and I still have to have my phone with Me it makes no sense to pay for the Garmin subscription plan.

I have been troubleshooting two 945 LTE and post this report incase it helps someone...

I took two watches on a final test run today.

White watch GPS on, paired to a stryd footpod and chest heart rate. Wrist heart rate off.
Black Watch GPS on and Wrist Heart rate on.
The run was out 7.25 miles and back on the same path 7.25 miles. Total time 1:46

Both watches start Live track normally and work at the start.

55 mins (7 miles) in the Black watch loses the LTE connection 'Live Track Not Connected'. I stop the run and immediately try to restart a new run. Although it said 'Live track ready' it did not establish a connection after several minutes of running. Next I powered off the watch and ran for five minutes. After restarting the watch it still could not establish a connection even though it said 'Live Track Ready'. I powered off the watch again to let it 'cool down'. After 10 more mins being powered down I restarted the watch and started a new run successfully with Live tracking. This new run stayed connected for the last four miles of the run.

The white watch had stayed connected to LTE through all of the black watch issues until mile 10.5 approx 75 mins the white watch also lost LTE connection and remained disconnected all the way home at mile 14.5. As soon as I saved the run I tried to start a new run on the white watch but it failed to start the Live Track session even though it said Live track ready. After several minutes of trying I stopped that run and powered down the watch. After about five minutes 'cool down' I powered up the white watch again and this time it did establish a successful Live Track.

My summary is that these watches seem to have a thermal issue. The network coverage does not seem to be the issue as the watches work fine on the way out but fail on the way back along the same path that they were previously successful. Also one watch can fail when the other watch remains connected. If it was a cell coverage issue you would expect both watches to lose connection in the same spots and that is not the case. If the network coverage is fine then it must be the individual watches that are having the issues. Today both watches worked at the start but both watches failed the connection after approx 1 hour of active use. This leads me to think something is happening to the watches over time and my past experience working with mobile processors and action cameras all point towards a thermal processing issue is building up in the watches over time that ultimately interrupts the connection after some time of working hard. Both watches had good battery levels and todays temperature was a cool 54 F.

I absolutely wanted this watch design to work well as it would solve all of my problems. Maybe the plastic case is part of the thermal problem (if that is the cause of disconnection). Maybe more metal would help to dissipate heat.

phil