When you purchase a cellphone, pill, or smartwatch right this moment, you realize precisely what number of years of software updates it will obtain — corresponding to three years for the Pixel Watch 2 or 4 years for the Galaxy Watch 6. However, purchase a Garmin, Fitbit, or every other fitness-branded watch, and it is a complete crapshoot to predict how lengthy till it turns into an unchanging artifact, lapped by new tech designed to make it look out of date.
I believe it is time for that to change.
Sunday Runday
In his weekly column, our Senior Editor of Wearables and Fitness Michael Hicks talks in regards to the world of wearables, apps, and fitness tech associated to working and well being, in his quest to get sooner and more healthy.
When $100-or-less fitness trackers had been common, you can anticipate no matter software got here with it within the field, and never a lot else. And that is cheap, in the identical method that an affordable Android cellphone will get one OS replace at most.
Now, corporations usually promote $400+ fitness watches with sturdy coaching and mapping software. But in contrast to comparably priced smartwatches, these watches have thriller CPUs and subsequent to no assure for how lengthy they’re going to get proper assist.
We know that the Pixel Watch 2 makes use of the Snapdragon W5 chip with 2GB of RAM, and that each Google and Qualcomm are invested in making it carry out properly for years. Choose a fitness watch as a substitute, and also you’re unlikely to know what efficiency positive aspects it gives over earlier generations, even when you take it aside and research the proprietary parts.
With Garmin, for occasion, I do know usually that Fenix or Epix watches have the perfect efficiency to allow the newest software methods, whereas an Instinct watch usually has slower efficiency. But I do not know the magnitude of the distinction, which makes it exhausting to decide how a lot to spend so my watch has the capability to be taught future methods.
In most instances, designing a fitness watch or tracker is all about steadiness. You have to make it compact sufficient to hold it skinny, clocked low sufficient that the battery can final a few weeks, and in some way sturdy sufficient to energy the entire sensors and satellites inside.
Once you strike that steadiness, you possibly can’t simply add new software willy-nilly a 12 months later, not with out overloading the finely-tuned equilibrium between design and efficiency. And identical to that, your fancy, expensive wearable might get left behind — normally with no alternative for a trade-in deal.
Garmin makes a degree of updating its outdated watches just a few months after new fashions launch. It dawdles lengthy sufficient to tantalize its clients into upgrading; solely after the launch window ends will Garmin begrudgingly add new options to the older fashions, assuming they are not restricted by {hardware} limitations.
Just take a look at final month’s large Garmin function dump of instruments like Hill Scores, Training Readiness, Training Load Ratio, and Morning Report to last-gen Forerunner, Fenix, Epix, and Instinct watches. Garmin is aware of full properly that if it sells a brand new mannequin yearly after which does not assist year-old watches, folks will cease trusting that the perfect Garmin watches will stay the perfect for very lengthy.
My foremost problem is that it is by no means a assure that your watch will get a brand new function. The indisputable fact that Garmin can cost $3,000 for a carbon-fiber MARQ watch with out promising how lengthy the watch will obtain assist is an issue!
I’m assured Garmin will give it years of updates, however it needs to be a matter of document, not of belief within the model. And provided that it is a redesign of the MARQ Gen 2 watch launched in 2022, that makes me surprise if the {hardware} inside is already barely dated in contrast to 2023 watches just like the Epix Pro Gen 2. I could be unsuitable, however I’ve no method of figuring out.
For one other instance, take a look at 2022’s Garmin Forerunner 255, a wonderful working watch supplanted by the Forerunner 265 lower than a 12 months later. Aside from the brand-new AMOLED display screen, the 265’s one improve was Training Readiness, which measures your physique’s readiness to work out primarily based on restoration knowledge, coaching load, HRV, sleep, and stress knowledge. The Forerunner 255 measures each single a type of metrics individually, however Garmin nonetheless hasn’t given it the capability to convert that knowledge into Training Readiness.
Is this as a result of Garmin gave the 255 a lesser chip that may’t deal with the additional work of calculating it? We do not know as a result of Garmin does not promote efficiency positive aspects per technology. Or is it reserving the function to justify the 265’s $100 worth bump? Again, we do not know.
I need to give credit score to COROS, a working watch model and Garmin rival that appears to deal with its updates higher. All of its EvoLab coaching suggestions are the identical throughout all watches, no matter worth. COROS even gave all of its gadgets a firmware replace proper earlier than the COROS PACE 3 launched, guaranteeing PACE 2 homeowners had comparable software and primarily had {hardware} causes to improve.
This is the one exception I do know of, nevertheless; when you purchase an Amazfit watch or every other typical fitness watch, you would possibly get updates up till the subsequent mannequin arrives, however not often something apart from bug fixes after that.
I’m curious if Fitbit would be the subsequent main model to buck this development and set an instance for dealing with software updates. The early days of Google’s Fitbit acquisition had been a large number, because the Sense 2 and Versa 4 had last-gen options walked again or disabled. But perhaps the Charge 6 will start to reverse this development.
Google set a formidable new commonplace with the Pixel 8 and its seven years of OS updates. This solely applies to telephones, in fact — Google’s method of difficult the supremacy of long-lived iPhones.
What I need to see is Google take an identical method to Fitbit OS that it does to Wear OS. Not to make Fitbit’s software a duplicate of Wear OS — you possibly can at all times get the Pixel Watch 2 for a steadiness between smarts and fitness — however merely to give Fitbit’s software a daily replace cadence, with annual or quarterly benchmarks for when to anticipate new options.
I simply started testing the Fitbit Charge 6 and genuinely prefer it up to now (hold an eye fixed out for my evaluation coming quickly). But with out diving into the main points, it is honest to say {that a} $160 fitness tracker that finally expenses you for Fitbit Premium is an actual funding when you do not know how lengthy Google will correctly assist it — particularly the Google apps. The firm has a behavior of eradicating options from older gadgets, in spite of everything.
Now, think about if Google had been to promise that the Charge 6 would get the identical software updates because the hypothetical Charge 7 in 2024 or 2025. Or that the Garmin Venu 3 will get all of the preliminary options of the Venu 4 in a 12 months or two?
That might sound unreasonable, however we know {that a} $200 Apple Watch SE or $300 Galaxy Watch 6 will get new options from watches years from now that have not even been designed but. Why cannot we anticipate the identical software dedication from fitness watches, particularly ones with comparable (or increased) worth tags?
I’ve come to settle for that fitness watches’ proprietary chargers are an unsolvable mess as a result of they cannot mandate that watches hold the identical design from one technology to the subsequent. But I do suppose it is honest to anticipate extra from the unnamed funds CPUs positioned inside fitness watches to go away sufficient leeway for proper updates a 12 months or two down the road.