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>It is surprisingly difficult to make synchronisation work between two devices No it isn't. We were doing it for years before "the cloud" or even the modern I
by DebtDeflation 6y ago
>It is surprisingly difficult to make synchronisation work between two devices
No it isn't. We were doing it for years before "the cloud" or even the modern Internet even existed using Bluetooth, RF, IR, and cables. Have you ever looked at a .fit file on a Garmin watch? It's a binary format, but is straightforward to convert to CSV, and doesn't contain much beyond timestamp, latitude, longitude, altitude, heart rate, cadence, and a few other fields. Calculating distance, duration, training effect, calories burned, etc. is simple summarization and arithmetic, plotting course on a map just requires an offline map and a plotting library. It already does all of this ON THE WATCH itself without needing any connection to anything else, so there's nothing stopping an app from doing the same thing locally on a much more powerful iPhone or Android phone. The Garmin cloud is only inserted in the process here so they can monetize your data.
- johannes1234321 6y agoAnd even many Garmin devices sync via the phone and app: My Edge bike computer connects via Bluetooth to the Garmin app, which uploads the file to the connect website and then downloads the analysis again. There is no technical hindrance for doing analysis in the app (I wrote my own decoders for the fit file format some time ago for building my own archive) except that this makes it simple to have consistent state and defined usage of things like altitude correction.
- RandomWorker 6y agoExcept battery life. Nobody wants an apps that are battery hogs. Sending the data is less computationally expensive and therefore uses less energy. Also, takes out the difficulty figuring out how this processing might impact Various phone models, one word they didn’t care or were lazy both are bad pr.
- tridentlead 6y agoNot true. It is much, much more energy intensive to run an RF link up to a tower or WiFi than to sum 2000 rows of 10 column wide data. RF works by emitting energy into free space, and there is absolutely no way it is cheaper for this type of thing (especially if it takes the transmitter out of sleep mode, like if you’re really out there and in airplane mode).
- ultrarunner 6y agoI can tell you that I would welcome the option to sync locally the last few days, even if I had to plug in my phone to support the massive power costs. Maybe they could offload the processing to the watch (since it already is able to display a summary of these files).
- jbj 6y agoI used to sync my old 910 via ANT+ to my former Samsung Galaxy which has ANT+. Using a third party transfer app. and then viewing it with another third party app, directly on my phone. no battery complaints, but those ANT transfers were pretty flakey. I dont think you can browse files on the watch through bluetooth, but an OTG cable would do the trick.
- darkerside 6y agoI imagine it's more difficult to make it so every one of your different devices (Garmin has an extensive lineup) is able to interface appropriately with every other device than it is to code against a straightforward HTTP(S) server sitting somewhere in the cloud under your complete control. Fits Hanlon's Razor better, too.