Easy fix:
Buy a fitness/smart watch - an older one is fine, why go excessive
Download GadgetBridge from F-Droid/Droidify and then use that instead of a proprietary app which is just harvesting your data and telemetry at every chance:
I wish that was the case, but it absolutely doesn’t even come close.
For all those clammering to sell and throw away, stick on the shelf, I will keep, buy, or what have you all your Garmin watches so long as they aren’t trashed and are relatively newer models.
Yes I am serious. PM me so we can discuss further if your done with Garmin.
Garmin is being eaten alive by Apple and Samsung, it’s their last grasp for some air. They refused to change their business model for a decade and it’s a payback time.
Which is odd because their stuff is really good for sensors, and has weeks of battery life vs other smartwatches that struggle to last a day.
They’re stuck with 1990-s mentality and refuse to change, sadly.
What would you like them to add?
I don’t want them to add anything, I want them to switch from making a thousand models and selling software features as hardware revisions to making one model which can go do everything and to have a proper app store instead of a joke they have right now.
Gotcha, one model for everything would be quite expensive though given all the extra sensors, better displays, solar charging and stuff the higher end ones have yeah?
What kind of apps do you want to use?
These probably seem like dumb questions but the only other smart watch I’ve used was an android wear model, and that was an absolutely miserable experience compare to my garmin. I never found any apps worth using on it aside from normal built in smartwatch stuff.
one model for everything would be quite expensive though given all the extra sensors, better displays, solar charging and stuff the higher end ones have yeah?
That’s the problem with Garmin - it won’t be more expensive. If we ignore optional gimmicks like solar charging, then there are no real hardware differences between VivoActive 5 and Fenix 8 apart from the barometer, which was present in even cheaper VivoActive 3. Depth sensor, for example, is just a software feature of a barometer (you need to calculate depth and altitude differently from the same data).
Garmin is selling software features packaged as different hardware SKUs and charging up to 4x more depending on a feature set. Their product range is extremely large with multiple product families divided into multiple physical products, which all are essentially the same piece of hardware. And today their range is actually more streamlined than it was before.
This is a stark contrast to Apple, for example, where you have one bloody watch and that’s it. Yes, you have different physical sizes to fit different people, you have different materials and finishes to choose from, but when you’re buying an iWatch you’re getting all the features no matter which screen size and arm band you choose.
Garmin should realistically only have two lines of watches - base model which has everything Fenix 8 has for £250-300 to compete with iWatch and advanced model with solar and other gimmicks no one cares about for £650-800 to compete with iWatch Ultra. That’s all.
