It's not the clunkiness of the software that's the problem, it's the bugs. They frequently introduce regression defects in new releases. Like on my watch, suddenly structured track running workouts stopped tracking speed correctly and it took them like a year to fix it. I get the impression that they have a lack of test automation and too few human QA Engineers to manually test every feature on every release of every one of their many devices.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/06/competitor-software-inst...

▲

ck2 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Garmin routinely stops all development for even the flagship model just a few years back, bugs be damned

my Fenix6 still doesn't work correctly, no more updates

People dropping $1000+ on a Garmin better understand that's just for a few years, not a decade

▲

hengheng 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

On my Fenix 6, Bluetooth volume control broke after a few years, and now the volume slider does nothing, which the hivemind confirmed.

So, it is in fact worse than not getting upgrades, the software actually deteriorated over its lifecycle.

▲

jtbaker 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

on the flip side, my 12 year old garmin fenix 3 still works great. I finally upgraded to an instinct crossover last year because I wanted the mechanical hands and a smaller face, but the old Fenix is still great.

	▲	ck2 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I always thought it would be a really neat, very progressive idea if Garmin would "open source" firmware for models that are several generations back The fenix3 would be fascinating as an open-source test model

▲

stevage 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah I'm still mad at garmin for a bug they introduced to my Oregon 550 GPS which caused data to be lost. They actually broke the track archiving feature so badly it looked like no one had even tested it.