Yesterday night, at around 10:00pm, the latest software update was pushed on my Vivomove HR. At the end of it, with the gear symbol on the display and the progress bar underneath indicating 100%, the watch got stuck. I mean, literally, hands on the noon position, Bluetooth disconnected, display on with the two symbols I mentioned and totally unresponsive to touch/taps. I tried to recharge it, first with a wall adapter, then with a PC, nothing. Not even Garmin Express would recognize it.
Searched the internet, but could not find any reset/restart procedure that did not require access to the menu on the watch via touchscreen (DUH! and if it freezes????). At that point sent an email to Garmin support and started to come to terms with the idea that the watch was irreparably bricked. Generally speaking, when something happens in the middle of a firmware update, it is NOT a good omen.
At any rate, this morning the battery run out (no kidding, the display was on at full brightness from 10:00pm yesterday till approximately 9:00am this morning, I had recharged on Tuesday morning). Full of hope and crossing my fingers, I attached it to the charger and lo and behold, it started to charge and after about a minute or so it reconnected to my phone, restarted the software update procedure, this time rebooting once the progress bar reached 100%.
Wow, speaking about dodging a bullet... Just wanted to share my experience in case others run into the same hiccup. Luckily it does not appear to be a bug in the new software update that caused this, the watch now has version 4.40, the latest, and working perfectly. It must have been just a freak accident. Not having (apparently) a way to perform a "hard reset" if the screen and the whole watch freeze is a little disturbing, though. For a few years I had a Fitbit Charge HR, which had a lone hardware button. If the tracker froze, combining button presses and plug/unplug of the charger, a soft or a hard reset could be perforned. It came handy when a similar occurrence (botched firmware update), froze the device.
By the way, with this FW update it seems that they have tweaked again the sensitivity of the display automatic turn on. It was okay at the beginning, when I got the watch last February, but after one of the previous Firmware updates it had changed. I had to twist more my wrist toward the inside to make it turn on, rather than the more natural movement of slightly twisting while raising the arm closer to your eyes. Now it is back how it was, perfect!
