VA3 Bugs

I think a lot of the problems right now could be traced to one or two firmware bugs (which smack to me of rogue processes being spawned that just sit there eating power) and GC for Android being...well, a little flaky shall we say. I know there are a few bugs on the iOS version but right now I think the best we can do is report these issues direct to Garmin. In all fairness they were excellent in live chat when my first VA3 died.

Yes, please report directly! I was told they rely on their support calls to prioritize issues

Yesterday I had the SMS message bug again. They just won't go away and I can't dismiss them and when tapping the message it's pretty much unresponsive until you get an "error" screen. Only reboot solves this.

I have not had any issues with the SMS messages coming through to the watch and being dismissed. For your SMS issue you may want to try a hard reset to see if that clears it up.

As a bug which others may be experiencing, my VA3 battery life has been rather poor since opening on Xmas day. I initially put this down to my continuous prodding of the watch and tinkering with the various screens. Recently though without all my tinkering the battery life was stretching to about 2 days. I hard reset yesterday morning and the watch battery is now acting as expected, more in line with my old VAHR

I also have the issue with the SMS notifications, I am on Android and using the watch face "no frills", since some who had issues, were also using "no frills", could that be the reason? I am going to change the watch face to the original and check if the issue disappear.

The biggest bug I'm seeing is the malfunctioning touchscreen during activities (see https://forums.garmin.com/forum/into-sports/health-fitness/vivoactive-3-aa/1278719-trouble-to-stop-an-activity-to-cold?view=thread). Either goes crazy, or freezes. I can get around it now by locking the screen and doing a soft reset if necessary.

The other bug I've seen (also reported in another thread) is strange activity states... where the activity is started, never finished, but the watch doesn't think the activity is active. Starting a new activity finishes the old one.

Also with activities: setting the watchface from within the biking activity is buggy... the 3rd party watch faces don't render correctly, and the previous screen is shown (either the default watchface, or the green "+ Create New").

Backight is set to 100% during activity, despite setting it to 10% (or any other value). Reverts back to 10% when activity finishes. Not good for battery life.

I am finding the HR measurements to not even being in the ballpark with my actual heart rate during intensity workouts such as running on a treadmill. I wear a Polar H10 chest strap that is really accurate. The Vivoactive 3 will track the HR10 well for a while and then the V3 heart rate numbers will dive to one-half the values shown by the H10. On the other hand, I have seen the V3 numbers spike above my maximum theoretical heart rate for several minutes and far above the accurate numbers being shown by the H10. Just today after a one hour brisk walk of 3.5 miles, my average HR reported by my V3 was 56 whereas my actual average HR as measured by the H10 was 117.

I realize that this optical technology has limits across all brands of activity/fitness watches but I am really disappointed that I paid $300 for an exercise product that generates virtually worthless data. I have ordered a Garmin chest strap to use with my V3 to see if that solves the problem. If not, I will shortly be returning my V3 for a refund because my $80 Polar H10 far outperforms my $300 V3. It may not have all the fluff readouts but at least it is dependable for my exercise routines.