Garmin 935 – Thoughts on Firmware 7.60

I have to admit that last week’s firmware update for the Forerunner 935 somewhat slipped me by. Sure it installed but I imagined that it was just some bug fix for a few peripheral features.

But it wasn’t.

OK fixes were in there too but we also got some interesting featurettes

1. Firstly the rather enigmatic “Added remote display support for the Estimated Total Distance data field” – what that means is that the Estimated Total distance metric can be viewed in the Varia Vision. Whilst that is clearly not overly exciting in itself, I reckon it still opens up some hope for (eventually) some form of dumb terminal for your bike during a tri which can read stuff that the 935 broadcasts to it. OK, OK I know it’s really called an Edge unit but I’d buy a dumb unit. (And yes I appreciate that opens me up to all sorts of humorous comeback…go for it 😉 )
2. It’s now also possible to broadcast HR from a hotkey. I don’t do that but I guess hotkeys are the way to go. If any of you have used a Wahoo ELEMNT you might appreciate how easy it generally is to find things in their menu system. The vast amount of Garmin features are often hard to find in a relatively deeply nested menu system and hotkeys help user navigation a little for often used actions.
3. Also in this Garmin forum post a Garmin rep confirms that Performance stats will be sync’d across all devices at some point, presumably also including physiological stuff. This has been known about for a while but hopefully by the end of 2018 we will have the area of syncing across multiple devices well and truly FULLY sorted out with hopefully some early tidbits for us to play with in the Spring.
4. On the same forums others noted that their default unit of measure changed from KM to miles…for once mine did NOT do that during an update. Although note that changes to Garmin Connect Mobile could be a factor here too (I don’t really use GCM).
5. Another forum post (same v7.60 thread) alos points at new connectivity issues with Wahoo’s Tickr X. Perhaps we could jumpt to a conclusion that Garmin are tinkering with some of the ANT+ profiles. Maybe. Perhaps.

Finally, were there any other relatively trivial updates to the Fenix 5/935? Perhaps some that lots of people deem to insignificant to mention? Yes but don’t forget antennae modifications are routinely undertaken for no real reason all the time. Maybe (not).

Fenix 5 & 5s RECALL ? – Would you do that if you were Garmin right now?