Back to the Fenix 5; here (link to: the5krunner.com) we guess there will be a Fenix 6 (six) in 2019. That’s a long way away, however, and we have no idea what might be in it or if it will come in that timeframe. The certainty is that Garmin will keep on developing and improving one of its financially successful watches.
Garmin are generally good at introducing new functionality to existing watches; there are many examples but my favourite example is the 920XT which went from being originally ‘good’ to eventually becoming ‘feature-laden’. So, “What about the Fenix 5?”.
It looks like there will be a Fenix 5 PLUS Series in 2018 – aka v2
@Matt (link to: the5krunner.com) seems to think there will be NFC payments ie the Garmin Pay from the recently announced Vivoactive 3 (link to: the5krunner.com) AND GALILEO satellite support for greater positional accuracy ( link to: the5krunner.com and link to: the5krunner.com) @joop (link to: the5krunner.com) further states that there will be Samsung SmartThings support for the 645 with appelmoessite also saying the Fenix 5 plus will support SmartThings too (link to: gpsrumours.com).
I think that is all entirely plausible and, indeed reasonably likely. I had personally envisaged that GALILEO would come a little later but I’ll go with @Matt who also thinks that the 935 might have GALILEO on the cards too IF a plus version is released.
NFC would be of little interest to me personally but will be of significant interest to many Fenix users wanting to extend the day-to-day usefulness of their watch. GALILEO could herald a whole new level of positional/pace accuracy and I’m CERTAINLY interested in that ESPECIALLY when I would argue that Garmin do not seem to be as accurate as Polar/Suunto in that regard, on the whole.
Along with many others I will keep calling out the inaccuracies of Garmin’s metrics when I find them.
Bring on Q2.2018
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Galileo expects full operational capability (FOC) in 2019 with the complete 30-satellite Galileo system (24 operational and 6 active spares) is expected by 2020. So why worry about it now?
yes . I seem to remember it was partially operational from xmas 2016.
I’ve no idea if, for example, that would mean it could be fully operational in the northern hemisphere NOW???.
don’t know.
IMHO, garmin do have a GPS accuracy issue to address, it is one of their weaknesses.
I also don’t know if it actually will bring any real-world improvement to accuracy experienced by you and me. as you know there are other factors at play too,. the potential is there tho.
if it’s another GLONASS then it’s another ‘meh’…but glonas is 4.5m accuracy vs 5m of gps (and increased likelihood of delivering the 5m I know) galileo is 1m (from memory)
garmin pay is a bit of a cert though at some point soon. as I would imagine that will also bring transactional revenue with people using it.
Thats only in effect when the constellation is up. Why design for 2020? https://www.gsc-europa.eu/helpdesk/faqs#abletouse
The chipsets to fully support it aren’t really optimized for it yet
I’ve been mostly saying 2020 but keep reading (non official) people talking about earlier.
i’m not sure what the Initial Services that are apparently NOW operational actually do in detail.
chipsets: optimized by who? mediatek et al, or garmin et al. the latter might be working on that now.
Galileo support was added to the Foretrex line, but honestly I don’t think that will be the main “sell” for the mid cycle update. They won’t want to wait 2 years to add NFC to their top of the line watches. They’ll quietly fix the ANT+ antenna issue on the F5 and add NFC and call it something market-y.
yep foretrex was july https://the5krunner.com/2017/07/29/garmin-now-supports-galileo-official/.
i’m not sure the ant+ antennae thing is so simple. whatever the solution (if fixable via firmware) will need more power and that will hit battery life…admittedly it won’t make a jot of real world difference but people will take issue with it for the reason of lower battery life (indeed that would be a valid reason to return the device…not living up to original spec). plus simply using more power or new components will affect other components potentially.
nfc is def a selling point
by better GPS I meant that they have a general issue of AL L PRODUCTS and not just the current F5s. it could be an image thing for them ie Garmin=”just about acceptable component performance”…Poalr and Suunto DO see that as an area that they can win on i’m sure
Also, regarding NFC. I could care less about using it at the grocery store or mall while shopping. The really interesting part (to me) is to be out on a run and need to get something from a gas station quick without a wallet or phone. Could be awesome for “emergencies”.
yeah that’s a good point about emergencies. I would DEFINATELY have used that several times in months/years gone by
I purposefully avoid any kind of contactless payment after once being double-charged for a Snickers bar by a vending machine 😉 (true). but lots of other people love it.