Live Tracking on FR945

How should your 945 send your location without a mobile network available? So the answer is NO, no Live Track without a smartphone paired and with you.

Ok sorry - I dont know how these things work...

If I need a smartphone, however, this feature on the watch is completely useless, isnt it?

It s like having a car who can make coffee.. but in order to being able to make coffee, it does need a coffee machine nearby......

Not really. You can do plenty of things with your 945 without a smartphone paired. Some features require an internet connection and that  can only be achieved by bridging it through a smartphone. Coming Garmin watches might have mobile connectivity so this requirement will be gone probably.

I"m not sure how to answer that.  If the watch connected directly to the cellular network, you'd have another line to pay a monthly subscription for, your watch would be larger, and your battery life would suffer.  (And if you ran in the deep woods, you'd still need a satellite communicator.)

When I run, my phone is in a waist bag in the small of my back.  It's a royal pain to get to, and it's out of the way so it doesn't bother me.  When I'm running, if I don't recognize the song I can just look down at my watch and press the bottom left button and the song, artist, and album will be displayed on my wrist.  If I need to call for help (hasn't happened yet) I can hold down the top left button.  Maps are displayed on my wrist.

My phone doesn't need to be accessible, yet it provides access to the cellular network for Incidence Detection and (I suppose) Live Tracking.  I also get annoying notifications, but I'm slowly getting rid of them.

My phone's speaker also counts my laps aloud while I'm running without headphones.  But it's happening while the phone is out of the way.

There are lots of features that either require a smartphone or a physical connection to a computer.  There are other features that don't.  Generally, the more "connected" the feature, the more it needs something to connect to.

however, this feature on the watch is completely useless, isnt it?

Not useless, perhaps, but somewhat redundant, yes. The point of live track on a garmin wearable is that the thing is highly optimized from a user workflow perspective. When starting live track, you don't have to take out the phone out of your pocket, you don't need to start any dedicated application, you don't need to fiddle with the phone at all. With the start of the activity on your watch, the phone automatically starts the live track magic in the background without any additional user intervention. And, besides, you don't need to involve your phone's GPS, saving battery.

Sure, you can achieve similar functionality with the just the phone. This is how I rolled when I had a garmin watch without livetrack. But now, when I have a watch with livetrack, I very much prefer to use it.

I've actually never tried live tracking.  Reading the forums I've seen people complaining that it doesn't work well.  But generally people are more likely to complain about something that's not working than comment about something that is.

What's your experience been with Live Tracking?  Has it worked consistently?  What does it do to your battery life?

I think it works great and I haven't had any problems. I hate carrying a phone while running, but I normally run in my neighborhood where it's not really a necessity. Cycling and hiking is different. I throw my phone in my pack or cycle bag and my husband can track exactly where I'm at.  I don't know how much battery the feature uses, but it's quite minimal where I don't notice any significant drain.  I would love to see LTE come to the next forerunner as this would eliminate the need to carry my phone on shorter hikes and rides. 

Fredrik_Coulter said:

What's your experience been with Live Tracking?

I used it about a dozen times, mostly during long-distance trail races.

Fredrik_Coulter said:

Has it worked consistently? 

Yes, no issues whatsoever. I use the Forerunner 735XT. There might be some common issues on other devices.

Fredrik_Coulter said:

What does it do to your battery life?

The longest livetrack session I had was 12 hours. I haven't noticed any significant impact on battery, although I must admit that I did not watch it closely.

Livetrack on the 945 using iPhone is pretty reliable now.  I use it often and have no issues with it sending via the email link.

I do wish Garmin would enable it to send Text messages (like Strava) on the iPhone.  Strava, RoadID, and others have figured this out.  Garmin should as well.

dont get me wrong. I did not say the watch is useless if you dont have a smartphone paired. Actually I dont have one paired and still would find the FR945 great (if it worled properly, which it does NOT in my case, but this is another story).

My point was that THIS FEATURE is useless to me.. But I already see different opinions, so ok....