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Garmin beats Apple to market with satellite-connected smartwatch
- curtisszmania 1y ago[dead]
- rvz 1y agoApple does not care about being first to market.
- scotty79 1y agoIllegal in India?
- pta2002 1y agoWhy would it be? Genuine question here, is there some specific legislation in India about satellite connectivity?
- scotty79 1y agoYes. For example you can't use satellite phones in India.
- mikestew 1y agoYes, illegal to have a comms device that India can’t shut off (in essence): https://www.irunfar.com/trail-and-ultrarunners-warned-not-to-bring-an-inreach-or-other-satellite-device-to-india https://www.irunfar.com/trail-and-ultrarunners-warned-not-to...
- Mistletoe 1y agoThis is an insane law. I thought it was an anachronism from the 1933 law but nope they kept it in as late as 2023.
- mikestew 1y agoWouldn’t want any revolutionaries communicating over uncontrolled channels that the government can’t switch off. At least that’s what I assume the law is trying to prevent.
- whatsupdog 1y agoIndia has a big terrorism problem. It's easier to see everything from a western perspective.
- nradov 1y agoAs if Western countries don't have terrorism problems?
- whatsupdog 1y agoNot as bad as India.
- boxed 1y agoThe west just likes to pretend the problem isn't real.
- 1y ago
- jpc0 1y agoOnce you stray out of 2.4GHz there are a lot of restrictions on wireless communication. In many countries, I would even suspect the US, there are restrictions on which 5GHz channels are allowed to be used outside, how certain channels may be used even indoors etc. usually your consumer router/AP handles this for you but if you purchase an item in a different jurisdiction and then travel with it you may in reality not be compliant with local laws even with wifi. Satellite/UHF etc has even more restrictions. Disclaimer there is actually limits on 2.4GHz as well but I’m generally referring to wifi where the conventional channels are pretty universal
- elictronic 1y agoThey were made illegal after the 2008 Mumbai Terror attacks using Thuraya based ones.
- dockerd 1y agoNot just in India - https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=Dq3CEPZjfRAhtToGD4Yrz9 https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=Dq3CEPZjfRAhtToGD4Yrz9
- weird-eye-issue 1y agoAnd Thailand
- GaggiX 1y agoThey also beat Apple to market a smartwatch with microLED.
- mikestew 1y agoThat’s because after Apple Watch Edition sold like dog poop sandwiches, even Apple isn’t going to try and charge $2K for a watch. When I bought the original Apple Watch Ultra at $800, I thought that was pricey. And then Garmin these past few years has said, “hold this…”
- diego_moita 1y ago> starting at $1,200 So I am not their target market. I'll stick with Pebble, then.
- nradov 1y agoThe target market is affluent endurance athletes and outdoor enthusiasts. It's a limited niche but Garmin has a bunch of other smart watches targeting different customers at a range of price points.
- ansgri 1y agoFor $450 you can have Instinct 2X Solar, which is a very useful tool watch, surprisingly functional without phone connection and with a month of battery life. Can probably be used without ever connecting to a smartphone, I'm not 100% sure but everything seems to be configurable from the watch itself. Almost useless for reading text messages though. Basically a polar opposite to Apple Watch for a similar price. Pebble is nice as a concept, with E-Ink and easily programmable watchfaces, but its hardware is arguably quite ugly, and has way less sensors.
- electric_muse 1y ago[flagged]
- intothemild 1y agoThe software has gotten a lot better since they made that change. That said, I'm a distance runner and within our cohort almost none of us want to buy Fenix's anymore. Especially without MIP displays. The Enduro series is now the traditional Fenix series. Also this Fenix 8 Pro is not getting reviewed well by the usual people (des, ray, etc) it's not a good watch for the price. The sacrifices made for both LTE and the new display are too great.
- dchftcs 1y agoHow much better is it now? I hate Garmin with a passion because their watches are effectively region-locked by language support, an insanely consumer-hostile move in this day. I was unable to use any features related to text or whatsapp messages because the watch shockingly could not decode messages in my native language. Their software was also so flaky that I was woken up by a faulty vibration alert in the middle of the night multiple times during the few months I wore the Garmin Instinct Solar, and at least twice I was unable to fall back to sleep. That is, the watch was supposed to be in silent or DND mode, but the watch probably crashed or reset in the middle of the night, losing the silent or DND state, allowing an alert to go through. The sleep tracking was also very inaccurate, and sleep tracking is the single most valuable metric for me. To this day I fantasize posting a video where I smash my Garmin watch to pieces alerting other people how bad it is. Still, the hardware was near perfect and it's hard to hate the watch itself. But because of the software issues, it was no better than a dumb watch to me. I hate Garmin the company.
- nradov 1y agoGarmin devices have historically had two regions for languages: Asia and everywhere else. I suspect this is due to some legacy limitations in their proprietary OS around Unicode support. Years ago, it was very difficult to implement full support for all languages on a single device with very limited hardware and battery power.
- sorenjan 1y agoThe coverage map isn't that impressive though: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/connectivity/fenix8pro/coverage/ https://www.garmin.com/en-US/connectivity/fenix8pro/coverage... They're using geostationary satellites, but their Inreach stuff is using Iridium. Anyone know which satellites they're using for this, and if the coverage can be expected to increase in the future?
- mikestew 1y agoSkylo: https://www.skylo.tech/newsroom/skylo-expands-collaboration-with-garmin-to-bring-satellite-connectivity-to-new-fenix-r-8-pro-smartwatches https://www.skylo.tech/newsroom/skylo-expands-collaboration-...
- wongarsu 1y agoWow. Full coverage of the contiguous US is nice, but other than that you can mostly send emergency messages in places that are already close to civilization. Places that probably have cell coverage anyways
- wbl 1y agoThe West has much less cell service than you think especially in the pretty places.
- SoftTalker 1y agoThe US in general has much less cell service than you might think. I'm on a major carrier, I get 1 bar at home, there are places in my neighborhood that effectively have none, and I'm within a few miles of state forest where there is definitely no service. If you never leave a city or major transportation routes, you might not realize how much "dark" space there is. Those red maps the mobile service providers like to promote seem to me to be extremely deceptive.
- mikestew 1y agoIn a ten minute drive from Issaquah, WA (major suburb 20 minutes from Seattle), I can be in the woods with no cell coverage on a mountain frequented by many hikers (parts of Cougar Mt. are especially dead to cell phones). Let alone driving another half hour and having no cell coverage at all once you walk from the trailhead. And cell service is surprisingly poor at my home in the heart of Redmond suburbs, even. If you rely on a cell phone to get out of a tight spot, stay out of the woods, at least in the U. S. West.
- torstenvl 1y agoStill waiting on literally anyone but Apple to make a fitness watch/tracker that syncs over Bluetooth. (Stealing the cellular data connection over Bluetooth to sync to the cloud does not count. True Bluetooth sync works when there is no cell service.)
- mananaysiempre 1y agoAs a rule, non-LTE watches upload data over Bluetooth to the app (offline), which then relays that to whatever cloud service once there’s a connection. If you don’t want the second part, install Gadgetbridge and have your pick of the supported devices[1] (keeping in mind that that support not a boolean but rather feature-per-feature, so check the details). [1] https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/wearables/ https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/wearables/
- torstenvl 1y agoThis has not been my experience. If you know of a fitness tracker or smartwatch that can sync without a cloud account or cellular data connection I would be very interested. But I have not found any devices that meet those criteria. (And GadgetBridge does not work on iOS. It is Android-only.)
- eightys3v3n 1y agoMi Band with Notify on Android works just fine with no internet access or cloud account. You do need a cloud account at some point to get the key to access the watch though.
- torstenvl 1y ago> You do need a cloud account at some point... This is not "without a cloud account."
- eightys3v3n 1y agoI consider it to be so because the product cannot be taken away through any form of update after you have started using it without the cloud account. At that point it's basically a purchasing account and is functionally useless after that. Though I do understand the frustration. I hope Pebble releases something that is cloud free and no-service usable.
- amelius 1y agoI got really disappointed in Apple's hardware when my mom bought an Apple Watch. The software is entirely user-unfriendly. For one example: she wanted to use a photo as the standard background image. However, the clock digits could only be positioned such that they appeared over the faces in the photo. I cannot believe that Apple created such bad UX. This is really amateur level.
- portly 1y ago[flagged]
- thesumofall 1y agoTo be honest, my Garmin watches always felt like engineering marvels to me. Rugged, very long battery lives, small form factors, and for many years at the forefront of what was thought possible. Progress slowed down somewhat, but I still get a lot of joy out of them (currently a Forerunner 965). I haven’t been wearing my mechanical watch for ages. And as a sports watch they are very hard to beat
- lostlogin 1y agoThere are reasons other than time keeping that are quite compelling. Detection of atrial fibrillation is what I need. I’d really like a stand alone, always on device that did it. I can’t find this device.
- tallanvor 1y agoEvery couple of years? My last Garmin lasted 5 years, and I only upgraded because the new model finally had enough new features that I wanted. Otherwise I'd still be using the old one. My "new" one is over 3 years old and still working fine.
- asveikau 1y agoI feel like Garmin watches are kind of slept on by normies. They seem to have a niche for fitness enthusiasts. I got one primarily because it looks like a normal watch and not a tech product. But I do appreciate the fitness tracking. I've had the same one for 5 years and it's still solid.
- listic 1y agoCare to explain how does a normal watch look like nowadays and does a fitness product? I guess I am clueless in this. I wear Mi Band 4.
- asveikau 1y agoMine is a Garmin Fenix 6s. If you do a quick Google images for Garmin Fenix 6s and then for mi band 4, I think you will see the visual contrast we're talking about.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y agoIt actually is what appealed to me in how it is presented. Can you give me an idea on how open it is? Do I need register an account to run it?
- asveikau 1y agoI am not sure what you can do without an account, because I created an account on day 1. It connects to the phone over Bluetooth. Many operations need your phone to have internet. There is a kind of primitive app platform. The only app I really use is for Home Assistant, it makes https requests to HA over the phone. I connected it to Strava too, it can realtime send heart rate to that app without going to the internet, but it required jumping a few hoops in settings.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y agoThank you. This is useful to me. I will look into it more closely, but I think that will likely not be for me.
- bastawhiz 1y agoAs someone who isn't the target market for this, is there significant demand for this? $1200 for a smart watch that'll be e-waste in a few years is steep, plus $8/mo to keep it working (though I guess if you're going to pay four figures for a smart watch the $96/yr probably makes no difference). I guess if you intend to carry a watch anyway, you can save the few ounces and leave your phone at home? And maybe a few ounces for a battery pack to charge a phone? But at the same time, the absolute last time I'd ever want to be tapping out a text message on my watch is when I'm in need of rescue through satellite message. In the most genuine sense possible, I really don't know who the actual target audience is that's not just buying it for the clout.
- yellow_lead 1y agoI think there is demand. Hikers or trail runners may buy this for peace of mind, plus the other capabilities like maps. > the absolute last time I'd ever want to be tapping out a text message on my watch is when I'm in need of rescue through satellite message. In the most genuine sense possible, I really don't know who the actual target audience is that's not just buying it for the clout If you're truly in danger I think there's a button to contact rescue.
- alexmorley 1y agoThey are built to last. I've had my Fenix 5 for at least 7 years and it shows no signs of slowing or dying. Battery still lasts 5 days or so with normal use. Think it's just stopped getting software updates. Admittedly they were a bit cheaper back then (but this will one will be too next year)...
- bastawhiz 1y agoPerhaps I'm being overly cynical, but I have zero faith that any device whose primary distinguishing feature is a subscription connectivity service will be usable in more than five years.
- _xtrimsky 1y agoi'm an owner of their Garmin 945 LTE released over 4 years ago. I have paid the subscription since. The device is still working very well, still got an update a couple of months ago. Battery still lasts about 5 days.
- KaiserPro 1y agoI'm assuming from the blurb that its for emergencies, which makes sense. But, given the amount of power that needs to be emitted from that watch to make it to the Satellite I assume you need to take it off your wrist first?
- LeifCarrotson 1y agoNo, but it does require you to hold your arm in a particular way. I would be unsurprised if they're factoring in the capacitance and ground plane effect of the "big bag of saltwater" in their antenna design! It uses the magnetic compass, accelerometer, and GPS to help you aim it at the satellite (south, ~35 degrees above the horizon).
- izzydata 1y agoTechnically the Garmin Forerunner 945 LTE existed years ago.
- tra3 1y agoIf you've got a Garmin device check out GarminDB [0]. Garmin actually exposes an API that you can access with your credentials and get the raw activity, heart rate, etc data. [0]: https://github.com/tcgoetz/GarminDB https://github.com/tcgoetz/GarminDB
- vjvjvjvjghv 1y agoThe price is a little steep and I wonder how well a watch with its smaller antenna will work in difficult terrain. My InReach Mini often doesn’t connect in narrow canyons and I assume the smaller watch will be even worse. An emergency device that doesn’t work in an emergency is pretty useless. That’s why the iPhone satellite messaging doesn’t work for me either. In my backcountry tests it was a crapshoot whether it worked or didn’t.
- chaseadam17 1y agoI frequently leave my phone at home and rely on my Apple Watch for the occasional texts, map, etc. I’d prefer a Garmin but not being able to use your existing phone number is a dealbreaker.
- dcreater 1y agoSo did Google..
- bobby322 1y agoAnd...I could not care less. Garmin needs to fix their software, I am a long time garmin user, from using garmin head units on mountain bikes for the last 30 years, using garmin watches, I have had 4 fenix watches over the years, I swapped to a Apple watch ultra this year, and as a ultra distance trail runner and mountain biker, I could not be happier. Yes, the garmin units are more rugged and can handle more abuse, yes, their battery is light years ahead, but, it does not really matter anymore, the apple watch ultra is tough enough and the battery good enough, and the software is so much better. I can download multiple different running apps, and follow a training plan with it (runna workoutoutdoors, or one of the many other ones), I can do my cross training using one of the lifting apps, like heavy or strong, I can use it with golf etc. yes, the fenix range can do all of that aswell, but the experience is just so much nicer on the ultra. I struggle to see, how garmin can compete software wise, as a single company battling the army of independant developers out there building iOS/watchOS apps. And more importantly, my ultra never crash, my fenix went through a phase, where it would randomly reboot, until garmin pushed a fix. Bugs happen, I get it, but...it's been happening now for years with garmin.
- weird-eye-issue 1y agoEver used a Forerunner?
- bobby322 1y agoyup
- RankingMember 1y ago> my fenix went through a phase, where it would randomly reboot, until garmin pushed a fix This is something that just can't happen for this kind of use case, and the fact that bugs like this repeatedly happen with Garmin is mind-blowing to me. This company makes glass cockpits- if you ask me, they need to borrow someone from that team to show their consumer electronics team how to test their product and have a sense of urgency when things break.
- elric 1y agoTheir bike GPS range is...not good. I've owned two (Edge something?). Both were completely unusable for bike navigation. They're basically overpriced odometers with a shitty map bolted on as an afterthought. Updating the maps was an exercise anger management, involving setting up accounts and syncing data to their cloud (why would I want to do that to update a map???). The maps turned out to be woefully out of date even after updating. I managed to flash recent OSM data to one of the units, but the map rendering is so awful, cluttered, and so slow that this turned out to be just as pointless.
- endorphine 1y agoSide: The 15.05 firmware upgrade is causing severe battery drain in some models. From 8 days battery life it got down to 1. Multiple reports can be found here[1]. Support's response is "go to your region-local support shop". [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Garmin/comments/1mspank/venu_3_severe_battery_drain_after_1505_update/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Garmin/comments/1mspank/venu_3_seve...
- MikeKusold 1y agoThanks for that. I thought my Vivoactive 4 battery was just shot so I bought a new watch since it was only lasting a few hours. I keep waiting for the Apple Watch to last multiple days so I can leave Garmin.
- anshumankmr 1y agoWaiting for Coros to come out with one of these too.
- a_paddy 1y agoIn some European markets, Garmin is the dominant smartwatch brand having dethroned Fitbit.
- ubermonkey 1y agoI mean, maybe they do, but I had such an awful time with Garmin software on their cycling devices that they will never see another dime of my money. The Apple Watch is an imperfect replacement for a purpose-built hiking or cycling tracker, for sure, but that gap seems to be getting smaller. And people outside the endurance nerd community are more willing to sport an Apple Watch with regular clothes than the traditionally clunky Garmin models. (A certain degree of the Garmin clunkiness is an outgrowth of their better-suitedness to, for example, long hiking trips -- but as with everything, specialization comes with tradeoffs.)
- christabsmith 1y ago[dead]
- femiagbabiaka 1y agoIt's 2k.
- bobmcnamara 1y agoDup? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45118469 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45118469