2024 Endurance Sports – Technology Trends – GPS Watches & Bike Computers
A look at the emerging tech trends in our sports devices.
This post is often updated to reflect emerging trends in aspects of technology that affect our endurance watches and bike computers, it’s mostly written with Garmin in mind as they tend to be the first large-scale adopters of new technologies in sports. Originally this content was a part of the monthly report of watches that were soon to come to market.
Sports Watch Tech Trends?
You will find that general thrusts forward in watch tech lag behind smartphone tech.
It’s also worth noting that some sports-specific innovations will only ever work with a wearable (watch). For example, it is impractical for a smartphone to have a heart rate monitor.
Technological innovation tends to be focused on one specific problem but once solved, the solution can be applied to other uses. We might see medical technology later miniaturised for the wrist or we might see that a technology developed for the wrist quickly gets to market as it’s not intended as a medical-grade device… sometime later the various FDA approvals are obtained and the tech morphs over to the more lucrative medical realm.
It might be worth considering these 3 broad markets as the sources of innovations
- Medical – An example might be a hydration sensor for elderly, hospitalised patients
- Smart – An example might be LTE and the ability to make calls from a watch without a phone
- Sport – An example might be cDa ‘drag meter’ for cyclists
Some trends are technical, like ‘LTE/5G’ adoption, a feature which makes data transfer quicker. But that technical change then enables new services & features eg LTE supports location-based functionality which could show the performance stats of competitors on race day.
Screen Tech
Here we mostly look at the rise of AMOLED and the improved ability of touchscreens to correctly work
AMOLED
2022 was a watershed year for (AM)OLED. More is coming to sports watches near you for
As 2022 draws to a close even Polar got in on the AMOLED screen game with its Ignite 3 fitness watch. 2023 will see Garmin introduce new AMOLED models like a Forerunner 265 AMOLED version of the Forerunner 255, and a 965 version of the Forerunner 955.
Q: Why now?
A: Garmin made it obvious that 2022 was their year for AMOLED when it announced new AMOLED capabilities for CIQ late in 2021. Consumers have always wanted great screens but adoption has been strangled by the high power consumption of AMOLED-like technologies. For me, Garmin Epix 2 heralded the first proper sports watch that did everything right, including the screen.
Apple Watch Ultra marks the company’s intentions to take sports more seriously. It has introduced a super-bright 2,000-nit display and some clever ways of adapting the display for improved readability during night usage. Apple’s more material changes though are simply playing catch-up by introducing yet more ways to have an always-on-display and save power – for example, larger text will have a power save mode where only the outline of the text is illuminated and the inside of the text is turned off.
microLED is the next iteration and offers the potential for video display; flexible, longer-lasting screens compared to AMOLED; and high brightness and resolutions. It’s quite likely that Apple Watch Ultra will have microLED in 2025/26 and Garmin before that.
Solar (AM)OLED
Garmin is yet to introduce Solar charging and AMOLED on the same watch despite filing patents for Solar OLED in 2022. Fenix 8 and Fenix E may well see the introduction of Solar OLED on Fenix 8 with MIP related to the Fenix E.
Solar Perovskite
Perovskite-based panels can be better tuned to real-world light conditions and absorb a wider range of light than traditional solar panels. In the mid to late 2020s, we are likely to see Perovskite able to double the PCE efficiency of wearable solar panels. whether Garmin is able to use that tech or would even want to use it are different issues. whilst this will be awesome for your house’s Solar PV panels I doubt there is anywhere near as compelling a business case to use them on wearables.
Touchscreen
Touchscreens can now work excellently – as found on Apple Watch Ultra. Touchscreens will continue to become more prevalent as savvy manufacturers have realised that sports people tend not to want touchscreens whilst working out but DO want touchscreens for normal daily use. Indeed, for Garmin, touchscreen tech is essential to improve the experience of using its labyrinthine menu systems – what once was 20 button presses is now a few swipes and 3 button presses…MUCH better. Note well that Q4.2022 has seen Garmin introduce more complication-related features into CIQ 5 and these require a touchscreen.
Other screen tech
We’ve also seen Garmin Instinct Crossover introduce a hybrid digital/analogue display both to improve aesthetics as well as battery life. This might continue as a mini-trend but I suspect that is no overarching market desire for this.
I’ve read some predictions from other sites that hope for bike computers with full-width screens. That could happen but I think it’s called a smartphone and an app ;-). Bikes can take a bit of a beating sometimes and from a personal perspective, I’d like a screen that’s protected by some form of ‘bezel’.
Finally, there are E-ink-like screen technologies that consume tiny amounts of power. I don’t think we will see these much in the sports realm though.
Gesture Tech
WatchOS 8 brought gesture control to the Apple Watch primarily as an accessibility feature and was further improved in 2022 and became integral to the non-accessibility features of WatchOS. The video above shows that clenching your fist acts on the watch well before becoming more widespread on watchOS 8. Other gestures cause other actions and you could see how this becomes a means of adding a lap with a simple gesture. This is now possible with some Apple apps but gesture control remains restrictive about what it controls and 3rd party apps don’t often support it. Gesture control could be the sort of thing that Apple adds to the Workout app in 2023 but it’s unlikely other companies would follow suit other than with simple examples like Polar’s recent re-introduction of a slap-to-lap feature.
Connectivity Tech
We’re talking here about WiFi, LTE, Bluetooth and ANT+. Less so about satellite links that have made their way into the latest 2022 iPhones.
ANT+/BLE will remain the mainstay of the sports sensor realm and Bluetooth will eventually win despite not being as easy to use for sports.
WiFi will get ever faster but that won’t impact the performance of sports devices in any meaningful way. Sports watches will eventually play audio over WiFi speakers in homes (Google/Apple Home already do this)
Connectivity will keep incrementally improving in several ways
- More robust connections…I’m thinking of Bluetooth sensors that connect more easily and stay connected
- Longer range connections – Bluetooth 5 does this
- Lower powered connections – Bluetooth 5.2 does this for audio
- More connections – Bluetooth sensors (transmitters) will need two or three signals to give more pairing options to multiple other devices
Ultra Wideband Connectivity (UWB) was introduced by Apple’s FindMy service in 2021 and subsequently improved with precision finding. We’ve already seen a few sports devices have built-in UWB location chips (Van Moof bikes) and many cyclists have secreted Apple AirTags in their bikes to aid the recovery of stolen kit. We will see more new sports accessories in 2023 with inbuilt UWB chips.
LTE use is exemplified in the Apple Watch Ultra which allows the watch to make phone calls independently of the iPhone and to send and receive information over the net. Wear OS-based watches have similar opportunities however Garmin is somewhat limited by what it can achieve with LTE and for commercial reasons will, at best, be limited to simple messaging and location services. Garmin Cyclists will face a stark choice of partnering their rides with either a smartphone or non-Garmin LTE watch if they want to stay connected with family and friends.
Satellites
Satellite connectivity requires paid-for services and larger antennae. Satellite features will not be significant on sports adventure watches or bike computers for many more years.
We’ve seen Apple adopt emergency satellite messaging on its more recent iPhones. It will come for watches but not for a while.
Payment Tech /NFC
This works well on all the devices I’ve used that support it (Garmin, Fitbit, Apple, and others). Any innovation here seems to have stalled.
The difficulty for Garmin is it needs to explicitly support your bank – ie the chances are it won’t work in the sense that there is no commercial agreement to underpin that tech for your bank! If you use Wear OS/WatchOS then they have generic support for Mastercard, Visa and Amex but not in every region. Garmin probably doesn’t have the clout to negotiate these generic agreements. (Try Curve if your bank is not supported)
AFAIK it’s not possible to use PayPal/Stripe/BitCoin with Garmin/Wear OS/Watch OS. This is a pain as, for example, I’d like to be able to easily handle multiple currencies in my Paypal balances and braver investors than me would want to be able to use their BitCoin.
Perhaps we might see Coros innovate here but I doubt it. I don’t think they have the critical mass.
Apple Wallet expands to include e-tickets and loyalty cards on the Apple Watch. Garmin just can’t do that.
The two workarounds seem to use financial glue from platforms like Curve. you either make a strap/ring Curve-compatible or make your watch Curve-compatible, which Garmin has done. Curve then provided the links to very many VISA/Mastercard providers
Music Tech / Multi-Media Tech
Music tech has progressed from music control of your smartphone to the manual storage of MP3s on your watch, to cached support for streaming services and more recently, to truly live streaming over WiFi and/or LTE connections. I suppose that video playback is doomed to follow a similar route eventually but not soon, although I can watch my video doorbell lie on my Apple Watch….I’d prefer Game of Thrones though if I’m honest. It’s a bit more exciting.
Music Services: Garmin has commercially ‘nailed’ music whilst exercising by enabling the integration of AMAZON music, Spotify and Deezer. When I say ‘nailed’ I mean that their offering has a potentially wide appeal as it supports multiple services with the ability to relatively easily add others in the future. Audible, Apple Music and Google YouTube Music still need to be added to Garmin. I suspect that at least one of those won’t happen!
Geographic constraints: All music services are constrained by regional licensing differences. Depending on exactly where you are, this could be a real pain…or not.
Apple and Wear OS are most likely to be the platforms that offer the best, highly connected music services with true live streaming support for Apple Music and YouTube Music. After that Spotify will always be the one trying desperately to beat those types of innovation.
High-definition music playback is NOT supported by any smartwatch that I know eg one using AptX HD. AFAIK they all use normal-quality CODECS and have other audio-tech constraints which means that your running with music capability can sound GOOD but not EXCELLENT. And your sports watch cannot stream a high-quality music signal to high-quality Bluetooth speakers at home as many factors affect audio quality: lossy compression, CODECs, bitrate, driver diameter and more.
Garmin will always lag in the depth of the music services it offers but will always try to appeal to as wide a base as possible and support as many music services as it can. I doubt Garmin will have LTE-streamed music any time soon.
Coros, Polar and Suunto are in various stages of catching up. I’d say it is likely that Coros will introduce support for a streaming service in 2023.
GNSS Tech – GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, GPS III, DUAL-FREQUENCY
Support for multiple GNSS constellations with a single frequency just means that you can use more satellites. You will only have an increased likelihood of getting +/-5m accuracy.
2022 saw a good deal of usage of multi-frequency signals from the same, existing constellations. Multi-frequency enables the watch to determine & discard less accurate satellite signals and therefore improve precision and responsiveness. Airoha was the first chipset in this space and Sony has recently offered an alternative for wearables.
The Airoha chipset does seem to increase tracking accuracy and the accuracy of instant pace. Again the Garmin Epix 2 had this and it is probably better than the Ambit 3 and Polar V800 of old. But these new chipsets need different antennae so, for example, Suunto 9 Peak Pro uses a multi-frequency chipset but doesn’t enable multi-frequency because of the older antennae design. Reversing the logic shows that brands need to get the antennae design right to get the promised, higher levels of accuracy.
But more accuracy needs more power. Thus, Garmin introduces SatIQ which only enables the battery-guzzling, higher-accuracy mode when signal quality falls. This seems like a pretty good compromise to me (I use it).
This diagram simplistically shows how the purple signal is rejected in a multi-frequency setup.
Even in 2024, I’m sure that Garmin does NOT properly implement dual frequency rejection of poor signals.
Optical HR Tech, Medical Sensor Tech
There is interesting stuff happening here and except for Blood Pressure, the base level of sensors is already commercially available on several platforms (I’ve used them).
- Base Sensors – HR/HRV, O2 saturation, Respiratory Rate, Blood Pressure (2024), Core Body Temperature (2021), Hydration (2023), EDA/GSR (2020 Fitbit Sense)
- Advanced Sensors – Glucose (non-invasive 2024-6), Lactate (2024-6), Alcohol (2025)
- For the future – Urea, Creatinine, Albumin, Hemoglobin, Bilirubin (well beyond 2025)
We will continue to see the more interesting, novel sensors initially available from niche companies before becoming available as a package from Rockley Photonics.
Despite supposedly scientific claims to the contrary, we ARE THERE with good levels of resting HRV accuracy from several optical HR sensor models ranging from WHOOP to Garmin Elevate, LifeQ, Apple and Valencell. Sporting levels of HRV from optical sensors are currently impossible and even sporting levels of HR are far from universally accurate. I can only see this latter type of universal accuracy incrementally improving over the years ahead as new sensor models are slowly iterated.
A mythical new tech is needed to boost HR accuracy, although I think it’s called a chest strap 😉
Ignoring HR sensors, a lot of R&D goes to sense novel new physiological parameters. Supersapiens is an obvious one that uses relatively old tech to measure interstitial glucose, this evolved from an invasive diabetes sensor. Flowbio is another that looks at hydration sensors, Bioxensor looks at blood glucose non-invasively and Rockley Photonics is often mentioned as a sensor that will solve sensing everything and has contracted with Apple to do just that. Some of these new sensing techs are based on lower-powered and more accurate laser methods and promise to offer significantly more insight than currently possible covering lactate levels, hydration, glucose, core temperature, skin temperature and more.
ECG/EKG is also an interesting sensor type. Coros has just brought out HRV readings from an ECG/EKG digital crown which might increase resting HRV accuracy a tad. But holding your watch for 30-60 seconds is a sure way to appeal to no one. Athletes simply won’t use that tech in significant numbers. That said, several new Garmin devices have been released in recent months whose start buttons look suspiciously like ECG/EKG buttons. So I’m pretty sure that Garmin will soon follow the lead set by coros.
Frontier X2 is an interesting and expensive chest strap that claims ECG levels of accuracy during workouts. I believe Movesense (formerly Suunto) also has a similar ECG product. I can’t generally see the point of these. The vendors might argue that you can avoid death if you sense heart abnormalities but if you have a heart condition or are worried about your heart you should see a doctor and not buy an accurate chest strap. However, there might be some measure of heart stress that can be determined by an ECG during a workout by interrogating the ST segment of each beat.
Q: What to watch out for next?
A: The sports tech world will see more from hydration, Core Body Temperature and ECG/EKG in 2023. I might just be reviewing one now 😉


Elevation Tech
In my mind, Garmin has mostly nailed Elevation with Digital Elevation Maps (DEM) ie a map that contains a layer with the known elevations of every square metre of the earth (or whatever the actual resolution).
Couple that with algorithms that fine-tune elevation by barometric altimetry and GPS altimetry and we have the perfect solution. Well, unless you’re on a cliff face or in a built-up area. But it’s great for nearly all of us, nearly all of the time.
The problem is the cost and complexity of doing this for a smaller company is a significant barrier, so much so that only Coros seems to want to add maps. Polar probably does not need to confront the barrier posed by maps and Suunto seems to think that the smartphone is the best place for complex mapping tasks, and there’s probably some truth there. Wahoo also has DEM on its bike computers and decent maps are much more useful for bike-related sports than running/walking, IMO.
Environmental Profiling.
Solar Tech
Solar Tech options are spreading through Garmin’s newer products. Garmin had to do this as they bought a solar cell company. Few other companies will be able to follow their lead. However, battery tech is ever-improving and I think solar tech will ultimately be a dead end for Garmin and the sports endurance industry as a whole. (there will always be niche use cases)
That said we will probably see Solar-AMOLED technology then more efficient solar cells made with Perovskite.
Battery Tech
The biggest changes here are FAST CHARGING and larger capacities that support AMOLED
I said elsewhere that Garmin has reached “peak battery” I don’t know how they’ve done it. Coros is good too. Either way, their batteries last for a LONG time. WAY longer than almost any of us need them to.
OK, so the reality is that the battery lives are never as good as advertised once you start connecting all your sensors and navigating, getting lost and playing music but the battery life problem seems to have a workable end-game in sight. Consequently, now is the time to start introducing battery-eating functions again! #Sigh !! (Yes I’ll use them too!). This is one side of the equation needed for the expansion of the use of AMOLED.
Wireless charging and shared charging between devices might come to a watch near you. Or not. The adoption of charging technologies based on body heat might perhaps eventually spread more widely than solar charging.
The ‘next big thing’ could be GRAPHENE battery tech towards 2030 or solid state batteries (Murata make one for IoT as of 2022) Although 2023 will see more modest adoption of capacity-dense Li-ion batteries with a silicon-based anodes eg WHOOP


Until a new tech appears there are only 3 or 4 workarounds to battery limitations
- install a bigger battery
- reduce power consumption
- introduce fast charge batteries
- swappable batteries
Audible/Voice Tech
Voice Tech ranges from audible alerts to audio coaching. The emerging wave for non-music audio is for voice control and group voices.
Many running watches and app vendors have half-decent support for audio feedback during workouts. Thus, if you listen to music you may find yourself inadvertently ALSO hearing your 1km lap times when you were least expecting it.
Audio feedback is already more extensive than just for lap times but, perhaps, audio features are not so used by runners THAT widely. The inclusion of audio feedback and audio coaching is, however, part of a growing trend.
Audio alerts sound a bit amateurish but are useful when you are going flat out and don’t want to have to raise your wrist or glance down at your segment progress on your bike computer or watch.
Audio tech is a key way to access AI and all that comes with that.
If you use Siri or Google Assistant, Bixby or Amazon Alexa through speakers at home or in your car, then it’s not hard to see that very soon sports features on sports watches could be usefully responsive to audio commands. “OK-Google…take a lap” is a simple example. Indeed 2020 already saw Bryton pushing out Google Assistant…cool stuff. Apple already has Siri on the Watch but I don’t think it interacts with the workout.
Finally, on this point let me ask you a question. “How many times have you cycled with someone, nodded and pretended you heard what they were saying to you?” Yes, me too! There’s got to be scope for a Race Radio for the masses…aka Sunday Group chat. Wahoo has introduced it on Wahoo X and I’m sure cycling radios have existed for years so I’m looking for a cool way to get mass adoption of communications in group cycling. Which leads nicely onto…


Group Tech
Sports tech companies often talk about the social aspects of sports but they could do WAY more here than simply sharing a picture or graph across a few sports data platforms.
Strava Beacon and Garmin Group Track are nice enough features. Yet Tom Piddock’s new app to help organise Sunday group rides and Wahoo’s public route sharing shows that much more still needs to be done.
Why can’t our Varia lights synchronise together when we ride as a group? Why can’t Varia detect group riders getting dropped? Why can’t Garmin Edge use LTE to upload lap performances to centralised race portals? There are many more whys than that.
Garmin has already moved on this in 2024.
Solo Tech & Safety Tech
There is a trend for gamification of solitary training where services like Wahoo X and ZWIFT can make your treadmill experience part of a wider virtual group. That trend is going to continue with adoption boosted by the subscription revenues we all paid for indoor training during COVID-19 times.
Watches currently have the ‘I’ve cracked my skull alert’ and the ‘someone’s following me alert’. For certain demographics that sort of functionality will hopefully become more widely available. Why not add an extra level of locational intelligence here to prompt the watch wearer “Hey…do you really want to run down THIS street at night”.
Integration & Openness in a Connected World
There will be a deeper integration of sports watches with their companion apps. Any sports service worth its salt will be open to key data repositories like Google FIT, Apple Health, Strava and Garmin Connect.
Whilst HEALTH and activity data might become centralised in large repositories, Apple & co implements strict security policies to give consumers the right to security and anonymity. This is a major problem for ad companies as well as for well-intentioned sports data companies who want to gain insights from large data sets.
Mapping & Navigation
My most common command to my car’s navigation is, verbally, “Navigate me home” and I want that to take into account traffic delays, which it does. Sports navigational tech tries to do a lot of REALLY clever navigation stuff but I suspect that much of what they are trying to do is for a tiny number of people. None of the sports watches can get me home in the same easy way that I use my car/smartphone. Maybe it’s just me?
My next most pressing navigation need is simply to follow a route I’ve grabbed from somewhere (say, Google Maps) and, perhaps, to navigate back on track when I get lost. Oh and to share it easily with someone riding with me who has a different bike computer brand. These tasks are STILL SURPRISINGLY difficult in late 2024.
Clever routing algorithms exist to get you there in the easiest, fastest and shortest ways that can take into account grade and road surface. But the larger sports data platforms also can route you over the most popular routes (Garmin, Google, Apple, Strava, RwGPS) and that ultimately relies on ‘people knowing best’ rather than ‘tech knowing best’. For most sporty routing experiences, I suspect that POPULARITY ROUTING is all we need. Yet this is a challenge for someone like, say, Hammerhead or Suunto to implement as I suspect they don’t have the volume of data that Garmin does. So they ultimately have to either pay for it from a 3rd party or offer a service based on limited-popularity routing.
Processor Tech
Much of the processor details are beyond my inclination to get to grips with them.
Expect to see the increased capability of individual chips. For example, an OHR chip (Valencell) might also include an accelerometer. A processor like the Wear OS Snapdragon 4100 (2020/1) from Qualcomm may well boast GNSS capability as well as move Wear OS from 32bit to the faster 64bit. Multi-purpose chips potentially can make production easier as well as reduce power consumption.
I would only say that in 2024 ‘regular’ chips are becoming as dense as they can. There is a 2nm process node limit which has now been reached. To get that distance shorter is extremely difficult as chips then start to encounter (negative) quantum effects.
Environmental
Weather sensors and connectivity to weather services are already quite good. I was recently impressed with the MyRadar app which graphically shows incoming weather fronts on a map on my watch. Try doing that on a Garmin screen without a smartphone connected to the net.
I want to see more, free wind forecast information offered to athletes. The wind speed/direction is often hidden away in a forecast. As a cyclist, the wind is often as important to me as rain…I try to avoid excesses of both in equal measure. Yet if I am on a STRAVA segment day then the exact wind knowledge can be rather helpful, maybe I could even receive a daily text/email/alert to alert me of favourable, predicted wind conditions on my starred segments (products do exist here). Of course, products can already show forecasted wind AND ACTUAL headwind eg from AeroPod but why can’t Velocomp (AeroPod) produce a smaller wind sensor it might later be interesting for someone to collate actual wind strengths and directions compared to forecast to take into account/predict local disturbances of strength/direction.
IoT / Home
I suppose you can already turn on your fridge whilst running if you have the right pieces of kit and an IFTTT account. You can do a lot of things you don’t really need to with tech.
Novel Sensor Support
This requires the ‘novel sensor’ to exist. Thus we are still waiting for sporty, PRACTICAL hydration sensors (AURA), Carb/Fat usage (Lumen), blood pressure (OMRON Heart Guide) and non-invasive, blood glucose sensors (other than Supersapiens) to exist. Garmin can already connect to them BTW…with CIQ.
Novelty also includes connecting to existing sensors in novel ways. Thus Wahoo’s ‘hand off’ from the Rival to the ELEMNT bike computer is a novel way to use the ELEMNT.
ActiveLook seems to have sufficiently miniaturised glasses tech so that a HUD can be added to running or cycling glasses with a much more sensible resolution than offered by FROM Swim in its goggles. Interestingly, support for ActiveLook exists in Suunto, Garmin and Apple, plus I know that other brands are considering integration.
Sport Specificity
Garmin has the ability to iterate subtle variants of its tech across multiple sports. For example, Fenix morphs into Quatix for Marine usage. I expect Garmin to also iterate devices to MTB, track, ultra running (Enduro) and Cyclocross (trail or gravel) although that could be a features pack or protective accessory pack (eg as per Edge 520 Bundle)
Other manufacturers generally seem to be iterating technical variants of products eg introducing ‘navigation’ or STRAVA to a bike computer doesn’t especially target a sport. Rather it just introduces new technology.
One strategy for Garmin’s competitors is to target specific sports with a specific watch/bike computer but we see surprisingly little of that as the competitors try to focus on many customer segments at once. Coros Pace 2 was a great example of a focused running watch at a good price, guess what? It sold well.
Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
These phrases are usually used incorrectly by companies saying that their products use AI/ML when they don’t. Ignoring that, there are interesting developments appearing from the tech that looks at large data sets to discover new patterns and then to make personalised recommendations to you.
The easy examples are where we would look at the population of athletes and see what training regimes have the best outcomes. We could then refine that to look at smaller populations such as those in your age group or at your competence level to determine which workouts and combinations of workouts elicit the best responses.
You can then switch that approach to a wholly personal level and instead look at the large data set which is your own history of workouts. Again specific things you have done in the past will have worked better than others and AI/ML can discover these (eg AI Endurance)
Fitbit (2021) have said that they will be looking at AI/ML to discover what metrics motivate you. So we will probably eventually find that your app or your smartwatch automatically adjusts and focuses what you see on metrics that best spur you on to greater things! Hmmm.
There will be MANY more examples of what AI/ML can do. You just need a large data set, a bit of creative thinking and a good mathematician.
Image Recording
There’s probably a sports watch that can already take a photo and share it to your STRAVA feed. Xplova integrated video recording to their bikenav a few years ago along a similar vein. It’s already technically possible, there just has to be the commercial will to match whatever demand exists.
The question here is to what degree image capture needs to be integrated into a small sports device rather than existing as a secondary device (drone/GoPro). If I think of the 30 or so people that I regularly follow on STRAVA (who I actually know in real life) then only one of them adds the occasional image to a ride.
Workout Data Standards
The FIT file format is now a de-facto standard, although technical communication between platforms may well use JSON or TCX. But you don’t need to know that. You’d be surprised at how many newly released devices (non-Garmin) produce FIT files with schema errors, you’d be surprised at how many of those errors exist two years later. Or maybe you wouldn’t.
Summary
A lot could happen…probably not so much will happen.
microLED will happen
Gesture control will spread
The earliest that I see new novel sensor types physically inside recognised smartwatch brands would be 2024.
Been waiting so long for a new suunto like the fenix or vertix any idea if suunto will head in this direction
the 9 Peak and 9 Peak Pro are the ones going in that direction.
i have to admit i thought the Pro would be a large format watch.
my guess would be that their next watch will either be a larger format one or a next gen 7 model (which was also large). then aain they might be selling smaller watches as they’ve found their niche
Am I the only one who wants a watch to last 5 years and not die because of battery being charged too fast and too often with power hungry AMOLED screen? The older I get, the more I care about environment and try to use a phone for three instead of one year. Hopefully Fenix will always retain MiP screen. It’s not about going on a 30 hour run, it’s about not thinking about charging for 3 weeks that gives me peace of mind 🙂
No, you are not the only one. My forerunner 935 is now over 5 years old and I really don’t see any new must have features. So no need to buy a new one.
Batterylife is number 1 important feature. Not for 30 hour ultra’s, but because of battery degradation. My fr 935 started live with 24 hours of gps usage and is now down to less than 10. That means charging every 4 or 5 days and I cannot go out for a long run or bike ride when I have less than 30% left. Which is fine.
Glad I didn’t buy a forerunner 745 which started live with 16 hours of batterylife. That would be down to 6 or 7 after 5 years. That means a whole day hiking isn’t possible anymore.
Also, a big batterylife means less charging when it’s new (once every 2 weeks) which means less charge cycles which means less battery degradation.
I’m sure the hardcorefanboys will tell a dualband gps is a necessity but my 935 is already accurate enough. No need for better than already good enough. I don’t need more gimmicky data. I’m 52, I know my body. Don’t need maps, the breadcrumb on my 935 always lead my to the right track. Don’t need a pretty screen, it doesn’t make me a better runner.
exactly so.
I try to repeatedly make the battery degradation point in my reviews
Yeah that’s why I’m glad that Fenix 7, which I plan to buy after my Fenix 5 Plus dies, still has slow charging. I mean why would I want it to charge for 30 minutes instead of 2 hours if it lasts for 2-3 weeks? Quick charging is good when you need to charge daily but there’s no denying it kills battery. I also wonder if solar is good for battery. After all it basically makes it last longer without charging through the cable so theoretically it should degrade slower 🙂
iphone and apple watch, iirc, have a battery charging feature that intelligently charges to abut 80% and stops…unless your previous pattern of usage suggests you need more juice in the tank.
this prolongs battery life (so they say)
garmin should do something like that. I’m less sure of the effectiveness of such a strategy on batteries with much shorter battery lives (like the apple watch)
Hi,
Suggestion for your Map & Navigation section, Google Maps notifications on Garmin device.
– Maps NAV – https://apps.garmin.com/fr-FR/apps/ac9022d5-274b-4515-a1e5-1c2164c05202
– Nav Garmin Connect IQ (Companion App) – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ravenfeld.nav.garmin
Alexis is well known developer 🙂
Would you please expand on why Garmin isn’t/can’t add LTE to the Epix 2 line. It’s the one feature I really miss after switching from Apple Watch. Thanks
they can add LTE.
BUT the feature set would be significantly limited to the kinds of LTE features that Garmin has already released.
A couple of thoughts:
– I wonder if Garmin has more (soft / brand) clout than you think re payments if only through personal use i.e. individuals within the payments companies who are keen Garmin customers and sponsor the integration.
– what about sleep tracking and the whoop / oura challenge and how the likes of Garmin are going to step up to that? Personally I don’t like wearing a watch at night. I’d love Garmin to come up with some whoop-like product that had a slim-form that collected data, so that I don’t always need to be wearing my watch. I can’t bear wearing jewellery so Oura is out for me, although I like what it tracks.
garmin has SOME clout for sure. Compared to apple/Google i would assume it’s significantly smaller
well, it looks like oura has patented the smart ring just as stryd has patented the power footpod. so don’t expect a garmin ring anytime soon. try these:
https://the5krunner.com/2021/09/17/garmin-anti-predictions-what-wont-happen-in-2022/
https://the5krunner.com/2022/05/15/oura-sues-circular-ring/
https://the5krunner.com/2022/10/27/garmin-running-power-footpod/
but, as you say, that doesn’t explain why garmin has not yet produced a direct whoop competitor or even an arm strap oHRM. [dcr wonders the same]. maybe garmin wants you to buy a vivosmart 4 band
Wow. Those are some incredibly generic, obvious, and idiotic patents. Some monstrous company like Apple needs to litigate Oura into poverty over them.
it’s kinda what i thought too but, as you suggest, the cost of litigation for a small company can be a show-stopper.
Coros already supports Alipay intergration in mainland China.
I’ve never heard of Coros supporting Alipay. Do you have any info on that?
Amazfit/Zepp supports Alipay, maybe you thought of that?
I want an implant. Some little device the size of a few grains of rice that broadcasts HR and glucose levels and charges via some fancy heat differential, blood sugar, or some chemical reaction or something. Then it would broadcast 100% accurate data to my watch, and I can turn it on or off if needed via watch.
So someone get busy on that fanciful dream.
one day.
My nephew suggested to me years ago as he shone his torch through his 6-year old hand that “one day they will have lights like this in a ring that will be able to tell your heart beat and recovery states”. I gave him a clip round the ear and sent him to bed with no supper. impertinent young pup.
The mythical tech called chest strap: I love that line! But chest straps aren’t a silver bullet either, I keep getting obviously wrong data even with the supposedly infallibe H10 (noticeably less bad if clipped to the Cardiosport FF5, wich unfortunately lacks those anti-slip dots), often while my puny little Vivoactive 4 (girls’ size) almost nails it. A truly mythical new tech would be a watch or head unit that reads data from more than one sensor and switches to the least implausible one on the fly.
Elevation: DEM isn’t really in the picture once you have both barometry and GNSS running, because the latter two complement each other so nicely that adding DEM to the mix could only make it worse (and without GNSS you wouldn’t know where to look in the DEM anyways). DEM is only useful for elevation of places different from where the device is/was, e.g. during route planning (or if you want to get an idea how far above ground you are while you are up there for some reason). For planning, you actually want to go *beyond* a DEM raster, and have elevation data attached to the routing network graph (instead of a raster) where elevation is stored per distace along a road/path (as in “at 63.20km, TF-21 is at 1823m”), so that even at coordinates in the DEM raster where multiple roads are crossing at different levels (bridge, tunnel) each of them has its own elevation.
Regarding solar: LED screens could in theory be perfect for solar because they try hard to achieve zero albedo even without solar and emitters can be translucent and/or much smaller than the pixels they represent, but the company Garmin bought for their solar tech was all about LCD. They might pivot to a completely different display/collector combination, or they could be a one trick pony, impossible to know from the outside.
Great article! Any chance to write something about Polar future and plans for 2023?
hi
yes. but i dont KNOW their plans. so i would be speculating
it would be a 2023 version of something like this: https://the5krunner.com/2022/04/16/april-2022-gps-sports-wearables-watch-run-tri-garmin-gadgets-apple-polar-suunto-wahoo-samsung-fitbit/
FWIW: I was expecting something different from them before xmas (ie different to the ignite 3). with polar we are looking at 3 year (maybe 2 year) product life cycles. so the earliest excitement could be a new Grit X in April and you’d have to assume it would be like the Epix 2 ie was grit x with amoled.
Still waiting for magic Fitflex, I Hope that was not the code for ignite3
nope, something else.