Not to be "that guy" but when I hop on my bike, the watch detects it. It's not the same as starting the activity manually but if you check under HR or Intensity Minutes you'll see that if you've been cycling for at least 10 minutes it should detect it.
EDIT: I just saw that you mentioned about the move IQ - I haven't seen the VA3 record any activity in the same way that choosing the app for the activity does. I think that the move IQ detecting cycling is as good as it gets. If not, I feel like i've been deprived of a feature. :)
Right, it does indeed detect me cycling and places it on my timeline as a Move IQ event without the plots and graphs.
However, for walking and running you can set the watch to automatically start a "full size" activity after 5, 10 or 15 minutes. It is switched off by default, but if you set that to say 5 minutes and start walking, then after 5 minutes the watch will buzz and launch the walking app by itself. It even includes those first 5 minutes. Sounds like you haven't discovered that yet :)
Would be cool to have that feature for cycling as well...
Thanks for sharing that! I agree that would be a great feature - I never knew that about walking/running. Kind of ticks me off now that it isn't available for cycling and swimming, considering I'm off running because of meniscus injury. :P
I agree it would be a very necessary feature. I often see that my active calory count for short bike rides is close to zero which is annoying. For example: cycling 5km to work in the morning gives me roughly 100 active calories when I track it. When I don't, it's around 10-20 (I guess because the heart rate sensor measures less accurately and frequently when no activity is started?).
Just moved from Fitbit where it would detect many types of activities automatically. Not sure why Garmin would only allow Running and Walking where "Move IQ" does a really good job at detecting I was on a bike so clearly detection is there and working well.
