Funnily enough, the previous golfing model was the Approach S6 and that looks scarily like a Forerunner 235-cum-630 albeit with different buttons. I digress.
The newish S60 is a 3-button watch augmented with a colour touchscreen and many Fenix 5S-like features such as: 22mm QuickFit bands; 240x240px resolution; CIQ 2.X; livetrack; footpod enablement; BLE and ANT+ sensor compatibility; and, of course, a heap of golf-specific features.
So, as usual, there appears to be a bit of rampant speculation going on. Or so you might think. But then if we look at this GARMIN link entitled, “We Wish We Could Tell You This Amazing Reason to Port Your App to the Approach S60”, we will see that they are also doing a little speculating too – albeit back in April of this year. There the Garmin developers are hinting big-time that there is more than just the S60 for 3rd party developers to benefit from IF they also port their existing apps across to work on the S60.
To me that implies that the S60 is a little different under the covers. Perhaps someone can correct my assumption that this then could be the hardware base for some form of paired-back firmware from the Fenix 5 range? Volia. The 245.
The S60 has maps/images of some sort for the golf courses. One assumption might be that the 245 could have maps for running. I don’t buy that but maybe a 645 could have maps?
With Bluetooth support then clearly a link can be made to headphones for music. But whether or not that means the storage exists on the 245/645 is another matter entirely. I would image that a several gigs of storage wouldn’t be beyond the abilities of Garmin. Indeed surely music would be a much more widely used feature than maps? Maybe. But also think about what needs to happen ‘at the other end’. ie what is needed to get music onto the watch in the first place. That could be a 3rd party app (streaming???) or it could be a big change to the web-side of Garmin connect.
Not long until we find out I think.
Mid October at the latest.
OR it might refer to the newly leaked Vivoactive 3 (here) and below
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I wouldn’t be surprised if the 245 looked like this, but in truth you’ll most likely see something between this and the 935, even though the s60 looks strikingly like the 935 (just with a different bezel printed design).
I guess the 245 will have less metal and more plastic. Bit I would not mind since the weight will be less.
The blog post was from last week. US dates are Month/Day/Year. Initially I thought that was referring to the FR 645 but now I wonder if it’s not the Vivoactive 3. The Forerunner 6xx is kind of an odd duck in the Forerunner lineup. With the touchscreen it doesn’t slot easily into the typical “Good – Better – Best” arrangement. It’s almost like a singular member of a species: like Toad or Yoshi in Nintendo-land. So I’m not convinced a 645 is coming at all. But if it does, I would expect to look like the S60 with the 3 buttons.