945 SW 4.20 is live!

What does this mean? Will we finally also get backcountry skiing on the Forerunner 945? Or will this never come to the FR? Because then I might consider switching to a fenix 6 right away (even though it would be kind of a shame...)

Six years I've used Garmin products. I have never seen a live update where the only thing in it is support for newer CIQ apps. It's like ordering a small item from Amazon, and it comes in a gargantuan box.

Just why?

And by no means am I shooting the messenger here, but what's the point? A minor update to prime a beta? Why couldn't this have been rolled up with the GPS update?

Inquiring minds would like to know.

Because for some people an inability to update CIQ apps is significant.

What is the difference of the recorded data between Xc Ski and Bc Ski? Does the BC app recognise up-/downhill segments? If it does, please make it available for the 945.

For now I've made a copy of the XC Ski for backcountry skiing, which has worked fine except for the up/down separation. I also tried a copy of the Ski app but it messed up the uphill segments as it doesn't seem to record a gps track for those. 

My first thought was that garmin may be getting ready for a new feature launch that is delivered by connectIQ, but dont want to advertise what that is until the firmware has rolled out. Probably no correct though!

You realized that you answered this for yourself :-)?

It would simply be better to have a native app for Backcountry Skiing and since they already have it out there for the fenix 6, why not add it to the Forerunner as well? If you really didn't care about specific date you could use running for everything...

Ok, but, again they're using essentially a large box for a tiny thing. This is hot fix stuff and on top of this, it shows they're not working on features or fixing bugs, at least to me at least.

The watch is nearly a year old and we're on build 4.2? Honestly, the 935 had so much more attention placed on it and care given than this, and it shows. Their software so buggy and inconsistent I've had to completely disable Wi-Fi because otherwise my battery drain is 30% daily, Spotify reinstalls itself without my permission, and functions you're supposed to be using as it's part of the device (Pulse OX) are so poorly implemened that using them kills your battery. It's not a additional consumer, it's like putting a jet engine on a Prius.

I expected more than this cursory care from them with this watch.

2goBeyond said:

Six years I've used Garmin products. I have never seen a live update where the only thing in it is support for newer CIQ apps.

It's not unheard of to release an update with just one simple change.

Changes made from version 2.30 to 2.40:

• Changes to support factory.

Your example makes it extremly clear.

Oh, wait. In a decent software development process it would only make a change from 2.30 to 2.30.1.

But hey - this is Garmin we´re talking about!

We will be locking this thread now that the update is live and the discussion has gotten off topic. 

We will sometimes release updates with a single line in the changelog and apologize for not having more information available for this update. This does not stop our continued work on bug fixes and improvements/new features, which continue to be addressed separately from this update.