Garmin to introduce BLE Bonding and more in Connect IQ/CIQ System 7 for 2024

The next generation of CIQ software for apps in the next series of Garmin watches is usually announced in advance, similarly to how Apple WatchOS 10 was announced several months before Apple Watch 9. It gives insights into some, but not all, new features that we will see on new Forerunner, Fenix and Edge devices.

The latest intel we have is for some interesting developments that are likely to first appear in January 2024 around the same time as the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Last year we saw CIQ 6 and CIQ 6.2 introduce: scalable fonts; features to control GNSS and AMOLED; and product personalities to ease the development of CIQ apps/DFs for new Garmin devices.

Garmin CIQ 6.2 – new features and a new name

What Is In CIQ 7 for 2024

We only know of a few new features so far for CIQ 7. Here they are

Expanded AMOLED/AOD Control

The first Garmin Venu watch with AMOLED introduced a way to prevent screen burn-in by turning off the screen. Later devices can keep the screen in “Always On” mode if it’s using less than 10% of the screen pixels.

The new feature now considers the overall brightness of the screen which, if it’s below 10%, will stay in “Always On” mode. ie more pixels can be used without turning off the screen.

My Take: My Forerunner 965 does have an AOD. However, the display that is ‘always’ on is most definitely not the regular watch face but rather a minimal Garmin watch face. Perhaps now my chosen CIQ Watchface can simply be dimmed and stay Always-On. A dimmed screen should be able to more quickly respond to a wrist turn action and fully light up.

Speculation: It sounds like this will be a backwards-compatible feature to some degree ie that my FR965 will get it. However, instead, it could indicate that Garmin is planning to use newer AMOLED screen tech in 2024 or, even more excitingly, microLED screens. The latter is unlikely as microLED screens have inherent pixel-by-pixel control and I wouldn’t have thought would need this new feature. Put another way, it’s more likely that this feature will confirm the LACK of microLED screens next year!

BLE Bonding Support

No, I didn’t know that was a thing either!

BLE Bonding describes a more permanent form of BLE pairing.

My take: If your CIQ Data field previously dynamically found a BLE device, that device would be remembered and more quickly paired next time.

However, it gets deeper than that and Bonding should allow a PIN to be created for a sensor as well as a secure channel. If it can do that, which is quite likely, then you could expect to see your Edge bike computer turn into a remote control for a GoPro action camera. (Thank you @SD). Perhaps coincidentally, Insta360 today announced integrations with Garmin and Apple Watch.

Cloud Service Communications Improvements

This is a potentially more interesting addition and is only described somewhat vaguely in the information I have.

CIQ 7 has new ways to directly use Garmin communication APIs. The wording of the information I have talked about direct access being given to Data fields to the ‘communications module’ for cloud services.

Speculation: this could simply offer performance improvements for data fields to more quickly get information like weather. It seems that my weather data, at present, needs to be refreshed from the Connect app, perhaps that can be switched to direct access to the service over WiFi. OF course this could also excitingly signal that LTE services might become more useful. I think it does! More LTE to come in 2024!!

Performance Improvements

Then there are numerous performance improvements including faster developer compilation times; less resource-hungry CIQ elements; streamlined code; plus some technical stuff to do with tuples and arrays that I don’t understand 🙁

I chatted with the Stryd DF developer and he pointed out that current development is using every possible trick to cram the features into the available memory space. These new performance improvements appear to free up space and so let the likes of Stryd add more features to its DFs.

Take Out

Don’t forget that many standard features that come out-of-the-box with your Garmin are CIQ features. For example, your Garmin Sports Profiles are CIQ apps (or at least that’s what Garmin Express says). So these new features are not solely intended for 3rd party developers. They can be destined for new Garmin headline features as well.

The most interesting take is that Garmin could go deeper with LTE in 2024. So we might see slightly improved connectivity with a smaller, LTE-enabled FR965 – probably called a FR755LTE or FR765LTE. Using my example I might just get more easily refreshed weather data on my widgets over WiFi. There was always a reasonable chance of that anyway.

The exciting angle is if LTE services can leverage these new changes then it might, just might, herald something more significant linked to LTE, which thus could be one of the next-gen Garmin feature sets for Fenix/Venu.