Laws follow events. This is what will eventually kill bitcoin, when someone sets up payments for the deaths of world leaders or large scale population deaths and it actually works. At that point the financial gain of participants is outweighed by everyone else calling for it's removal.
Satellite/UHF etc has even more restrictions.
Disclaimer there is actually limits on 2.4GHz as well but I’m generally referring to wifi where the conventional channels are pretty universal
So I am not their target market. I'll stick with Pebble, then.
Pebble is nice as a concept, with E-Ink and easily programmable watchfaces, but its hardware is arguably quite ugly, and has way less sensors.
They're using geostationary satellites, but their Inreach stuff is using Iridium. Anyone know which satellites they're using for this, and if the coverage can be expected to increase in the future?
If you never leave a city or major transportation routes, you might not realize how much "dark" space there is. Those red maps the mobile service providers like to promote seem to me to be extremely deceptive.
And cell service is surprisingly poor at my home in the heart of Redmond suburbs, even. If you rely on a cell phone to get out of a tight spot, stay out of the woods, at least in the U. S. West.
Guess I won't be selling my Mini anytime soon !
(Stealing the cellular data connection over Bluetooth to sync to the cloud does not count. True Bluetooth sync works when there is no cell service.)
(And GadgetBridge does not work on iOS. It is Android-only.)
This is not "without a cloud account."
It is, however, a very mild case of cloud suckage, because the only thing the vendor learns in the process is an association between an email address and a device, after which you (delete the vendor app and) never communicate with them again. (You could in principle use a temporary email address if you’re particularly adventurous and don’t plan to resell.)
Huh? Do not all FitBits do this?
The software is entirely user-unfriendly. For one example: she wanted to use a photo as the standard background image. However, the clock digits could only be positioned such that they appeared over the faces in the photo. I cannot believe that Apple created such bad UX. This is really amateur level.
I've had the same one for 5 years and it's still solid.
If you do a quick Google images for Garmin Fenix 6s and then for mi band 4, I think you will see the visual contrast we're talking about.
It connects to the phone over Bluetooth. Many operations need your phone to have internet. There is a kind of primitive app platform. The only app I really use is for Home Assistant, it makes https requests to HA over the phone. I connected it to Strava too, it can realtime send heart rate to that app without going to the internet, but it required jumping a few hoops in settings.
But even in automotive they pivoted to working with car OEMs instead of relying on sale of independent devices.
Aerospace, Garmin was, is, and probably will be big
I wouldn't want to go into the lobster season without the ability to track my pods.
I guess if you intend to carry a watch anyway, you can save the few ounces and leave your phone at home? And maybe a few ounces for a battery pack to charge a phone? But at the same time, the absolute last time I'd ever want to be tapping out a text message on my watch is when I'm in need of rescue through satellite message. In the most genuine sense possible, I really don't know who the actual target audience is that's not just buying it for the clout.
> the absolute last time I'd ever want to be tapping out a text message on my watch is when I'm in need of rescue through satellite message. In the most genuine sense possible, I really don't know who the actual target audience is that's not just buying it for the clout
If you're truly in danger I think there's a button to contact rescue.
Admittedly they were a bit cheaper back then (but this will one will be too next year)...
Also, it's not like this is a hypothetical question, they've been around for decades. They do have a track record you can refer to, instead of just blind faith.
See: Garmin nüvi.
It's not as though my cell phone will continue working forever. Nest discontinued Nest Aware. I've gotten bitten by this exact phenomenon more times than I care to admit.
I don't care about Garmin's reputation, it's simply a fact that having satellites talking to specialized devices requires a critical mass of subscriptions. There's a chain of vendors that need to all be on board to support all the hardware that keeps those devices online and updated, and at some point they will be discontinued. Probably sooner rather than later, especially when plenty of new phones make the functionality here redundant.
You'll have to elaborate, that's a wide product line. And they still sell map updates for many Nuvi devices: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/1456/pn/010-D0743-00/#devices
That at least bodes well for long term support.
I suspect that subscription supported devices will actually get better support than standard Garmin products.
I always leave my phone at home for running, biking, hiking, kayaking, etc: not being tethered is part of the appeal.
The subscriptions for this new one or for InReach are infuriating, and they even recently made it worse because you can no longer effectively deactivate it. I only do 3 or 4 real backcountry expeditions in a year, I don't need this activated for 12 months.
I used to carry an InReach until the MBAs decided I was cheating them out of surplus cash that they could demand. Now I have an ACR PLB1 instead, no subscription but it can still call in the cavalry if I break my ankle twenty miles from civilization.
I would buy this if (honestly, when) the price drops by half, or better yet the Enduro version with a MIP screen. Some rich sucker will probably want to trade theirs in when the $3000 Fenix 9 Supreme comes out....
It beats having to buy a running watch AND a scuba diving computer AND an oxygen saturation sensor AND some kind of sleep monitor. And it's nice for surfing and sleeping better and jetlag recovery tips and heat aclimation and checking the pressure sensor to see when airplane cabin pressure starts dropping and tons more. After a while I noticed tons of other random interesting things too: when HRV goes down for a few days, I'll know I'll be sick 1 to 2 weeks later, when resting heart rate is like 55 or higher (high for me) I probably did exercise too close to bed time or am having sleeping probems, etc.
IMO super cool that it does all of those and more very well.
A $300 Forerunner 235 did all those things except the scuba stuff, which only a small number of people need (and most of those people really want an actual dive computer when their life is on the line deep underwater).
Edit Corrected to 165, not 265.
I got a Garmin Epix 2 watch 3 years ago as a replacement for the Apple Watch ULtra, which turned out to be a terrible sports watch. The Garmin still has two weeks battery life and gets all the functionality upgrades the newer watches are getting. More importantly, it looks great and does exactly what I want it to do simply, and reliably. At the time I also had a whoop. Now I only have the Garmin and it does all I need. It's one of those things you need to try to truly get.
That's far more common than you might think even in areas that should, on paper, have coverage.
I already take my phone for that reason but I think it's far more likely to be damaged in a crash than a smaller watch.
I currently have a Garmin Epix I've had for a few years that I'm otherwise happy with. I would consider switching for satellite SOS if the prices get less crazy.
I'd even consider an Apple watch despite it not working with my power meter and other sensors.
Garmin buyers typically choose the brand due to the much longer battery life, however Garmin doesn't have any magic battery technology - the longer battery life is simply from less full time services. If enabling the additional hardware functions that bring it on-par with the ultra, the ultra actually has a longer battery life.
The other issue is that both brands diverge in how they offer satellite connectivity. For iPhones, satellite connectivity includes messaging, sending locations, and carrier-provided functionality via satellite (e.g. SMS), alongside with the road-side assistance and SOS features. These are included at no cost (at this time).
Garmin on the other hand starts with a $40 activation fee, then a minimum per month charge of $8 USD which then still charges 50c per text message, $1 for voice messages and 60c an hour for location tracking. Garmin's also offers a $50 USD per month plan where some of these tariffs are included, but notably voice messages are limited to 50 units before reverting back to $1 each. The $40 activation fee prevents users from saving money by switching off the functionality when not needed.
They also run their own satellite network team that responds and forwards to SAR services which obviously has additional overhead
I imagine the transfective screen tech helps quite a bit too. Not having to max out the backlight's brightness to compete with the brightness of the sun has to help.
But, given the amount of power that needs to be emitted from that watch to make it to the Satellite I assume you need to take it off your wrist first?
It uses the magnetic compass, accelerometer, and GPS to help you aim it at the satellite (south, ~35 degrees above the horizon).
This is something that just can't happen for this kind of use case, and the fact that bugs like this repeatedly happen with Garmin is mind-blowing to me. This company makes glass cockpits- if you ask me, they need to borrow someone from that team to show their consumer electronics team how to test their product and have a sense of urgency when things break.
Updating the maps was an exercise anger management, involving setting up accounts and syncing data to their cloud (why would I want to do that to update a map???). The maps turned out to be woefully out of date even after updating.
I managed to flash recent OSM data to one of the units, but the map rendering is so awful, cluttered, and so slow that this turned out to be just as pointless.
Support's response is "go to your region-local support shop".
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Garmin/comments/1mspank/venu_3_seve...
I keep waiting for the Apple Watch to last multiple days so I can leave Garmin.
The Apple Watch is an imperfect replacement for a purpose-built hiking or cycling tracker, for sure, but that gap seems to be getting smaller. And people outside the endurance nerd community are more willing to sport an Apple Watch with regular clothes than the traditionally clunky Garmin models.
(A certain degree of the Garmin clunkiness is an outgrowth of their better-suitedness to, for example, long hiking trips -- but as with everything, specialization comes with tradeoffs.)
bobmcnamara•5mo ago