Disappointed with Garmin’s decision to stop new features for the Forerunner 965

I totally understand what you say from the technical/feature point of view. However, Garmin is a public owned company and its only duty is to benefit its shareholders. Any decision is made so that the total value of the company increases, which has actually happened. Shareholders say thank you. 

I agree. This is my first Garmin (fr965) and I find this information disheartening. If the platform is just about the same (except for the new sensors and other hardware features), why not for eg phase out new feature releases to older models one year per generation? Eg while fr970 gets the new functionality today, the fr965 only gets it one year later, the model before that two years later and so on as long as the Soc and most of the computing platform/screen is the same or close enough?

Those who need the new features will buy the new Garmins anyway, and long time users wouldn't be left in the dirt.

It seems like an excellent solution to me.

Unfortunately it seems that most people fall for the marketing magic and buy the newest devices with mostly unnecessary new features and in some cases worst hardware than in previous generation (i.e microLED's hit on battery performance). As long as this happens Garmin will maximalise their revenue by pumping up prices.

Also because of the above many users just upgrade to the newest generation, approving Garmin's assumption that the average user doesn't care if support is dropped.

I do care, and I'd hope that out of the following cases Garmin chooses the last one:

1. The started to unify the different "platforms" to make software development easier from now on, and they immediately stop supporting "older" devices (that were bought by many of us "knowing" that Garmin supports older devices (especially on the higher end) fir a few years, based on past experience.

2. The might decrease support on older devices to only bug fixes. No new features. 

3. They might continue to support the devices released not long ago, for a few years, just as they did in the past.

It's not that easy to know in which of these options we are, because we did get some "new features", at least from the marketing point of view.

There are also some users who always said that they're ok with not getting new features compared to what they had when they bought the device, and they'd prefer not to get new features, just bug fixes (because unfortunately in the past few years new firmware versions usually meant new , useless "features" (more to make the marketing department happy than the users) and even more new bugs (or they intentionally removed old features...)

I went through the feature-update history for all recent Fenix and Forerunner models (since 2016), focusing only on actual new features rather than bugfixes. Across the full lineup, the pattern is surprisingly consistent:

Fenix series

• Fenix 3 (2015): New features mainly in the early years; later updates were maintenance only.

• Fenix 5 (2017): Roughly 2–3 years of real feature updates.

• Fenix 6 (2019): The main outlier - major feature support for about 4½–5 years.

• Fenix 7 (2022): Still receiving new features into early 2025 -  3+ years of support so far.

Forerunner series

• FR735XT (2016): About 2 years of feature updates, fixes until 2020.

• FR935 (2017): Feature additions for 2–3 years, then mainly maintenance.

• FR645 / 645 Music (2018): Longer support than expected - feature updates up to ~6 years.

• FR245 (2019): Around 2–3 years of new features, maintenance into 2024.

• FR945 (2019): Roughly 3 years of meaningful feature updates.

• FR745 (2020): No major new features beyond 2–3 years, but ongoing maintenance.

• FR55 (2021): Mainly ~2 years of feature additions.

• FR255 / 955 (2022): Received new features until late 2024 - about 2½ years.

OLED Forerunner models

• FR265 / FR965 (2023):

  • Significant feature waves throughout 2023 and 2024.

  • But starting in 2025, new features are shifted to the next generation (Forerunner 570/970).

  • Both the 265 and 965 are explicitly excluded from the 2025 feature rollouts.
    Effective feature-support window is only ~1.5–2 years, notably shorter than previous Forerunners.

Across all examined models, the typical window for actual feature development is about 2–3 years.
Some models (like the Fenix 6 or FR645) are clear outliers with longer support.
But the OLED Forerunners (265/965) showed a shift: feature updates stopped earlier than in previous generations, ending after roughly two years.