My watch died again. 🥺

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NorthCascades
NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
About a month ago my watch (Garmin Fenix 6X) suffered some kind of malfunction and stopped working completely. It was only able to display weird screens and couldn't even tell the time. Garmin rushed me a new one, which got a similar glitch this morning. It can still tell time and track exercise, but won't talk to my phone. All the alarms are gone, it's switched many settings and will not allow me to put them back.

I'm at a loss here. I've had the F6x for almost 3 years and it's never done anything wrong until this. I have very much come to rely on it.

I expect Garmin will replace it again because they seem to take good care of their customers, but I'm concerned about this happening again. My hunch is this is a bug in their newer software.

I've been wanting an F7 for the touch screen maps, but haven't wanted to spend the money. Maybe this is the universe telling me to?

Replies

  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
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    It came back to life, but most of my settings are different. I'm 1'1" tall now, and born in 1901. It thinks my FTP is 10 watts per kilogram, and I'd really like to cash that in somehow.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,403 Member
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    Is there something on the Garmin forum about this? Maybe a dodgy firmware update. Wouldn't be the first time Garmin released a firmware the bricked their devices.
  • SuzanneC1l9zz
    SuzanneC1l9zz Posts: 452 Member
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    ^^^ this.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
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    yirara wrote: »
    Is there something on the Garmin forum about this? Maybe a dodgy firmware update. Wouldn't be the first time Garmin released a firmware the bricked their devices.

    I found one post there describing exactly what happened the first time, but nothing since.

    I was able to get my watch working perfectly again, I'm curious whether this will be the last time. Obviously I hope so.

    I would call Garmin to tell them about what happened, but I don't have repro steps and I doubt they'll care without that.
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 33,969 Member
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    I have no knowledge to share, but I just wanted to say, "Tech makes our lives easier!!!"

    I keep telling myself that when I'm spending hours of my life trying to "fix" some gadget that's gone rogue.

    Good luck. :neutral:
  • cyndit1
    cyndit1 Posts: 170 Member
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    I know my Garmin just had a software update yesterday. So far so good but I will keep an eye out for weird stuff. Hope yours stays working.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,403 Member
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    First thing I do with every new garmin device is to switch auto updates off. I was one of those affected by the battery runs empty in 2 days flat after firmware update bug last year, and have since then seen quite a few firmware updates come by that seem to brick some devices or accidentally remove features. Despite their beta firmware programme Garmin just doesn't manage to prevent these things.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,127 Member
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    @yirara how do you switch them off? I've had my share of software glitches too, they even gave me a new watch because they wouldn't believe me when I said my issues were software related and they would be better off debugging their latest update 🙄
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,403 Member
    edited April 2022
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    Lietchi wrote: »
    @yirara how do you switch them off? I've had my share of software glitches too, they even gave me a new watch because they wouldn't believe me when I said my issues were software related and they would be better off debugging their latest update 🙄

    Somewhere in Settings -> System of the watch. In my watch Software Update is the second last menu point there.
    I have a look in the Garmin forums every now and then, and when a firmware update has no real complains after a month or so then I might install it.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,127 Member
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    I found 'software update' in the settings, but not how to turn automatic updates off 🤷🏻 oh well.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,403 Member
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    Lietchi wrote: »
    I found 'software update' in the settings, but not how to turn automatic updates off 🤷🏻 oh well.

    Oh!
    I can switch auto update off there. Sorry.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
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    Lietchi wrote: »
    @yirara how do you switch them off? I've had my share of software glitches too, they even gave me a new watch because they wouldn't believe me when I said my issues were software related and they would be better off debugging their latest update 🙄

    For the record. That cost them a lot of money. They sent you a watch, paid shipping (presumably both ways?), paid somebody to process the return, and the labor to debug the watch you sent them is expensive. They almost certainly investigate the dead hardware people sent them to figure out what went wrong and fix it - so they don't have to keep replacing them. Eventually they will see that it was a software issue, that they spent $$$ unnecessarily to deal with it, and that will affect the priority of that type of bug.

    I say all this as a software developer who's been put on difficult bugs that happened to customers but never happened in our labs.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
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    yirara wrote: »
    First thing I do with every new garmin device is to switch auto updates off. I was one of those affected by the battery runs empty in 2 days flat after firmware update bug last year, and have since then seen quite a few firmware updates come by that seem to brick some devices or accidentally remove features. Despite their beta firmware programme Garmin just doesn't manage to prevent these things.

    I did that for a while. It wouldn't have saved me in these two cases, what happened seems exceedingly rare. (We call this an edge case.) I only saw one other person affected, months ago. But if you're concerned, this is a good way to protect yourself.

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