Even though the Forerunner 935 and fenix 5 devices are very similar there are slight differences that separate the two based on the primary markets they serve, the lap key being the relevant difference in this case. We appreciate the discussion and feedback
Umm strange one though. I find it hard to imagine a long conversation about whether certain users might need to shut off the lap button or not.
I am not aware of any other functional differences between the two either?
I think the Vivoactive has this feature (helped a friend enable lap key), so I guess there's a certain market segment that doesn't want a lap button? I always thought the Vivoactive's reason was that lap/back is a capacitive touch button and not a push button, so it might be easier to trigger by accident. But maybe that's not the reason. :confused:
edit: To be clear I think this is a good feature to have, but I don't understand the market segmentation here.
Even though the Forerunner 935 and fenix 5 devices are very similar there are slight differences that separate the two based on the primary markets they serve, the lap key being the relevant difference in this case. We appreciate the discussion and feedback
I would absolutely want to turn it off, preferably by activity, like on the F5. The inconsistent back-button is annoying.
The most awesome feature would be the ability to freely remap the Up, Down, Back and Lap functions.
Then I would make mine more like the 630 which has separate lap and back buttons because it doesn't need up and down buttons.
Maybe something like this: Lap: Up button Back: Back button Up: not assigned Down: Down button
Or maybe: Lap: Back + Up buttons (All other functions the same as normal)
At first it would be annoying to re-learn things, but at least the buttons wouldn't be context sensitive anymore, for the most part. Of course with the 1st setup it would be a bit tougher to enter text in the keyboard and I'm sure there's other stuff I haven't considered (like the tiny number of people who would actually want this).
I realize that's the opposite extreme, but that would be a pretty cool feature.
Heh, not that I missed not being able to disable it so far but the 'design choice' kinda baffles me as well.
If it is implemented for one of the series and the other is almost identical, how can the choice be for something so general and handy for many (I mean, from having no choice you have a choice, that's always a good thing) to not include it on another. Would like to see it as I have accidentaly pressed it myself as well, just never bothered me enough to actually get annoyed by it.
I think you can achieve that with a hot key as "Lap" is one of the options you can set a hot key to do and Back+Up is one of the hotkeys you can set. At moment got that one set to "Widgets" should I care to access them mid activity.
I think you can achieve that with a hot key as "Lap" is one of the options you can set a hot key to do and Back+Up is one of the hotkeys you can set. At moment got that one set to "Widgets" should I care to access them mid activity.
Hmm, yeah I seem to recall that now. Thanks for reminding me. But that would be useless for me without the ability to disable the normal lap key. So I guess that's all I need.
In fact it doesn't really make a lot of sense to be able to map a hot key to "Lap" unless you can also disable the normal lap key, unless somebody needs two ways to mark a lap for some reason. I imagine the former feature was designed with the second feature in mind.
One problem is that all the hotkeys, even the "combo" hotkeys (such as Back + Up) seem to require you to hold down the key(s) for about a second. This makes sense for "Hold Back" and "Hold Start", but I don't know if it makes sense for Back + Up. If you used Back + Up for laps then your laps would be off by a second or so. Not the end of the world, of course. I'm sure the reason is to make sure that the hotkey trigger was deliberate on the user's part.
So in my perfect world it would be nice to be able to remap some of the other keys/functions, without long presses. (I realize that's not going to happen)
Out of curiosity I mapped to Start+Up to "Lap" and it does indeed take a manual lap. Obviously on the data pages it is bit redundant (well unless you had the software to disable the regular key) but it does also allow you to take a lap if say you were perusing widgets with the timer going. A bit of a niche requirement but you can do it...
Perhaps a bit of a lag invoking it but certainly not as much as a second and usually with lap splits accuracy of less than one second is rarely an issue.
Hello, Some very good reasons to add the possibility to disable the Lap button was pointed out here ! Seven months have passed … It seems that Garmin does not care about their customers at all ! BR, Maciej
