End of life?

I fear you are correct. Just like the 225 before it, it's dropped way down in the priority list and will be superseeded within 6 months to a year of release.

Fenix and the new Vivoactive will get the bulk of the resources for now. It's very aggravating that this is how Garmin do business now. Had I known this, I would have thought twice about getting this watch.

They've decided to chase the $ by developing more product to capture the growing "smart fitness watch" market. In doing so, their quality has dropped drastically and they will no doubt lose reputation amongst their existing (and previously loyal) customer base.

When the market becomes active and you are faced with many competitors, this is the time to focus on quality so that you stand out from the junk in the market - Not the time to go crazy developing mediocre product after mediocre product just to compete. You can't have it all - Garmin will probaby lose the running watch segment of the market after a while and wont really penetrate the fitness/activity tracker segments because their competitors like fitbit/apple etc are already ahead and stengthening. Poor vision IMO

When the market becomes active and you are faced with many competitors, this is the time to focus on quality so that you stand out from the junk in the market - Not the time to go crazy developing mediocre product after mediocre product just to compete.

I disagree. A reputation of make solid, good quality consumer-grade products that don't have the wow factor will not give a company the growth spurts it wants/needs in order to remain relevant in a rapidly expanding market. Being waterproof (thus having an advantage over Fitbit devices) and having long battery life (thus having an advantage over the Apple Watch) would not be sufficient to stop current customers from being lured over to the shiny new products in the market, unless Garmin can tick enough of the ‘me too’ boxes in terms of features, and market its running watches as keeping up with technology trends in terms of bells and whistles, while defending the home turf of serving athletes who prefer to be seen as being serious about their sports of choice, and don't want to be seen dead wearing what every fitness fad groupie is buying.

I disagree. A reputation of make solid, good quality consumer-grade products that don't have the wow factor will not give a company the growth spurts it wants/needs in order to remain relevant in a rapidly expanding market. Being waterproof (thus having an advantage over Fitbit devices) and having long battery life (thus having an advantage over the Apple Watch) would not be sufficient to stop current customers from being lured over to the shiny new products in the market, unless Garmin can tick enough of the ‘me too’ boxes in terms of features, and market its running watches as keeping up with technology trends in terms of bells and whistles, while defending the home turf of serving athletes who prefer to be seen as being serious about their sports of choice, and don't want to be seen dead wearing what every fitness fad groupie is buying.

I agree that they need to develop products with the wow factor but this can't be at the expense of what they've previously been known for and what their brand represented. The 630/235/230 watches are their premium running watches and as such should have a level of premiumness (yes I've made up a word) attached to them. I don't think they have this now: On-paper-features yes, quality and execution no.

In my opinion, they're in danger of doing many things just ok and nothing really well. So the people who could be lured to FitBit et al because of certain features their products have, will end up there anyway - Fitbits software, IT and apps are leaps ahead of Garmin's. The athletes will end up with whomever can execute these specialised products well. At the moment, I see Garmin in limbo and it's going to hurt their brand in the long term.

As soon as someone else releases a watch that is comparable to my 235 I will probably buy it. Garmin makes nice hardware but their software is rubbish.

What's released an how often seems to be something decided by the specific device teams. The f3 seems to get public betas quite often (but that can be a pain if they come so fast they break stuff :0 ).

Then there are the "public betas" and "private betas" for other devices. I've had the vivoactive for a year, and seen only one "public beta" (available to everyone), but I'll guess that there have been "private betas" (only available to garmin folks and maybe testers). For the VVA, you really only see non-beta releases.

Also, for the WHR, I'll guess that there's one group that does that FW for all the devices, and when they are working on fixes, they might focus on device "A", and when it works there, move it to devices "B", "C", and "D", so device "A" may get more updates and the rest.

In the case of the 23x, when it first came out, it had 2.x FW, and it's now 4.x, so things are moving along. Nothing is stalled or at "end of life" that I can see. But sometimes it can take a bit of time for updates to happen.

I disagree. A reputation of make solid, good quality consumer-grade products that don't have the wow factor will not give a company the growth spurts it wants/needs in order to remain relevant in a rapidly expanding market. Being waterproof (thus having an advantage over Fitbit devices) and having long battery life (thus having an advantage over the Apple Watch) would not be sufficient to stop current customers from being lured over to the shiny new products in the market, unless Garmin can tick enough of the ‘me too’ boxes in terms of features, and market its running watches as keeping up with technology trends in terms of bells and whistles, while defending the home turf of serving athletes who prefer to be seen as being serious about their sports of choice, and don't want to be seen dead wearing what every fitness fad groupie is buying.

On the other hand you lure in people with a mediocre product which is only likely to result in them running back to their original brands because those actually work and meet expectations.

On the other hand you lure in people with a mediocre product which is only likely to result in them running back to their original brands because those actually work and meet expectations.

I don't have an ‘original brand’ to turn to, but I was initially lured in by TomTom – back in the middle of January 2016 – on the promise that the Spark Cardio+Music has moved beyond just the GPS sports watch but is also a 24x7 activity (including HR) tracker[SUP]*[/SUP], will handle and display smartphone notifications[SUP]*[/SUP], and can store and play downloaded music files to boot. (The features marked with [SUP]*[/SUP] were to be made available via firmware updates by the end of 2015, according to the official product display stands in retail stores.) Not only did it fail to deliver on 24x7 HR monitoring (until late in January) and smartphone notifications (which are still not happening for any mobile operating system platform), its operational reliability as a GPS sports watch – supposedly its core purpose – was shocking in my experience. So, yes, mediocre products can do a company's reputation and finances harm, and drive customers away.

The only thing that is better in the TomTom ecosystem is that it has an iOS app that works properly on an iPad (which Garmin doesn't offer) and makes good use of the available screen real estate in either orientation; as well, I could click on a lap and it'd zoom in and highlight the part of the route covered on the map.

On the other hand, as far as I'm concerned, my Garmin Forerunner 235 actually does everything it was advertised to do. 24x7 activity and HR tracking (and RHR tracking, too). Smartphone notifications (and syncing the phone's calendar entries, too). VO2Max estimates. Back-to-start navigation. Syncs even with a Windows Phone, even though it wasn't promised in the in-store marketing collateral, and most consumers wouldn't expect it. Customisability via Connect IQ. And it hasn't lost my activity data by crashing mid-workout even once, so far. Its GPS works OK when I'm not running on city streets lined with tall buildings, and I didn't test the TomTom for whether it performs better than the Garmin in Sydney CBD. Battery life is decent.

Yes, I can think of many ways the watch's performance and/or accuracy could be improved, including in the aspects described above. However, listening to customer requests for features or giving customers a say in how their watches are fine-tuned for individual preferences/priorities is something else altogether.

Not trying to stir anything up here, but I have to ask. What do those of you looking for more updates expect to be fixed aside from the 72bpm and user selectable sampling rate? Because really I don't see where the core functionality that was promised is lacking since the last firmware release that got the interval alerts working.

The spikey data that the HRM had during runs initially has been fixed, I don't see much in the way of activity in the 66bpm bug threads any more, the broken intervals are fixed, problems with GPS being active in profiles where it was turned off was fixed, GPS and timing functions were fine from the start, and it seems that the problems with step counts and calories being way off were a problem from GC side of things.

As of the latest firmware update this watch does everything I was expecting it to do. All of my problems are on the GC Mobile side where it does double or sometimes triple entries to Apple Health, but an update to the watch isn't going to help that.

All that functionality, yet still can't set daily calorie/distance goals. :rolleyes:

235 is NOT just a running watch, anymore. It's advertised as "activity tracker/running watch"
And you can NOT call yourself an activity tracker unless you allow people to TRACK THEIR ACTIVITY. Not every 'activity' involves step counting.


Sigh...

I wouldn't hold my breath for an update though.

Not trying to stir anything up here, but I have to ask. What do those of you looking for more updates expect to be fixed aside from the 72bpm and user selectable sampling rate? Because really I don't see where the core functionality that was promised is lacking since the last firmware release that got the interval alerts working.

The spikey data that the HRM had during runs initially has been fixed, I don't see much in the way of activity in the 66bpm bug threads any more, the broken intervals are fixed, problems with GPS being active in profiles where it was turned off was fixed, GPS and timing functions were fine from the start, and it seems that the problems with step counts and calories being way off were a problem from GC side of things.

As of the latest firmware update this watch does everything I was expecting it to do. All of my problems are on the GC Mobile side where it does double or sometimes triple entries to Apple Health, but an update to the watch isn't going to help that.

The latest firmware update is working for you. Prior to 4.10, the only issue I had with the 235 was the 72 default HR (oddly enough Garmin thought to fix this with the VSHR in mid January, but did nothing with the 235). Since 4.10, I have to restart my phone every time I want to connect to Bluetooth. I've done workouts with a chest strap where my HR was tracked in each zone correctly, but I only burned 54 calories when it should have been around 400 and my training effect was 1.0. I have two different chest straps that will connect and disconnect randomly during a workout. The same happens with my GPS connection during runs and bike rides. The watch now randomly turns itself on and off. This morning my HR was stuck at 47 before I had to do a restart to clear it. Those are just a few issues I have now that I never had prior to this update. My point? Every time there's an update to fix an issue, new ones are caused. There's no rhyme or reason to it, but if you look at the post following update releases, that's when the problems start. I was fortunate enough that I wasn't having any problems in the past. Even the issues you stated that were fixed with previous updates never affected my watch. I just assumed it was user error until I downloaded 4.10. Will the next update correct my issues? Possibly. But just watch how many new threads will be started with 4.XX started this or that. End life? I don't think so. But I honestly don't believe the 235 will ever become problem free.