Yay more shit that nobody asked for.
TL;DR: They lied to us, plain and simple. The temptation of Make Line Go Up was enough to make Garmin abandon their promise of no subscriptions and no paywalls.
Nobody outside of the idiots in the boardroom wants this, especially the AI garbage. It’s disgusting that $1100 for a Fenix 8 isn’t already enough for these greedy assholes. Original features are “free for now,” but I guarantee you this will change when nobody signs up and MBA dipshits start leaning on everybody to force users to provide recurring revenue by moving previously free functionality into the subscription tier. This is not a prediction or an “if,” it is an inevitability and a “when,” unless we nip this in the bud right now.
I am on my second Garmin watch, a Fenix 6. Previously I had a 5x. My wife has a Lily. These will be our last ever Garmin devices, and I’ll be sure to let them know it. It’s getting to the point where no smartwatch maker can be trusted, unsurprisingly, and honestly the alleged benefits they provide are probably no longer worth it in the long run. Before smartwatches were a thing I amassed quite a selection of normal watches, which I will probably just go back to using when my current watch inevitably cacks it, or the software becomes so borked that it’s useless.
Edit: In fact, just now I did let them know it. I also cancelled my inReach subscription and let them know it there as well, and deleted my Connect account (and pulled my watch faces off of their marketplace) and also let them know it there too. When I do something I mean it. I suggest you all do the same; the only ear these companies have is located in their coin purses.
Hopefully things like PineTime, Bangle.js, and the return of Pebble can shake up the market. There’s always neat DIY hacks like the SensorWatch too that can still make the space fun even if the major players get enshittified.
I’d be fine with my OG Pebble, honestly. The only functions I really need and genuinely use are custom watch faces to change things up now and again, and notifications going to my phone.
I got my first Garmin after Pebble evaporated because it was quite rugged, had a similar color screen, and most importantly a long battery life. It has built in mapping functionality which I thought I’d use, but I really don’t. I have zero interest in the tracking features, health and otherwise, and leave all of that turned off. I personally can’t understand why everyone is so obsessed with that all the time, nor anyone in their right mind would trust sending any of that kind of data to a third party for any reason.
HealthyPi will be a too option too. Much more fitness focused than pinetime or banglejs
They haven’t paywalled anything that I have seen. This is a paid tier.
I also just deleted my Connect account. I have had it with these greedy American corporations. To anyone looking for an alternative, I highly recommend checking out Gadgetbridge, it still lets you use your watch with almost all the same features, only the data never leaves your phone.
Any advice for getting it to actually work with a Garmin watch? I just tried it with my Fenix 6 (solar) and it doesn’t detect the watch at all. In fact, even selecting “show unsupported devices” reveals that my watch’s bluetooth MAC address isn’t even seen by my phone. (Yes, I unpaired it and removed Connect from my phone. I also resorted to factory resetting my watch. No dice.)
At the moment I’m using it unconnected because it still shows the time and so forth with the watch face I want. But without any kind of connectivity there’s really no point to not just putting this thing back in its box for good and grabbing one of my numerous dumb watches.
Did you put your watch into pairing mode? On my Forerunner, I have to go “Settings/Connectivity/Phone/Pair Phone” on my watch.
Yes indeed, I absolutely did. Still no joy, alas.
Gadgetbridge
Is this in the google app store? I can’t find it.
I think it is only on F-droid
I saw that but I don’t know what that is.
It’s an alternative “app store” but for only free and open source software, highly recommend checking it out!
Thank you! I’m in a similar boat having picked up a replacement Venu a few months ago and this will absolutely be my last Garmin device. My Strava account was nuked some time ago when I couldn’t fire up the app without “Subscribe!” popups. My body is ready for open health tracking.
I love my 5X but I will be fucked if I buy another watch if this happpens.
Not true and none of their features or use has changed. Simply don’t get the paid feature. Everything works as it should. This is massively overblown. Everyone’s pushing AI this and that because it’s the hot thing right now.
The green mile. A great movie for those wondering.
A parallel comment to my rant yesterday, I see the pushback has already begun in Garmin’s reviews against this nonsense. All of the recent reviews of their Android app are now overwhelmingly complaints about the subscription addition, and I suspect iOS is the same. If you haven’t done so already, please be sure to blow Garmin up over this on any platform you can get your grubby hands on.
I know posting this here is probably more like spitting on a forest fire; I’m sure the seven or eight nerds here on Lemmy dedicated enough to care have already put Garmin on blast for this (myself included), but it never hurts to make sure.
What’s crazy is I’m on the fence about a beeline moto because they have subscription for basic shit like traffic, thinking Garmin would be better.
Welp.
Garmin is at the top of the game for health tracking and fitness bar none but if your looking to monitor traffic a different type of smart watch would suit you better.
I loathe saying this but a pixel watch with Gmaps might be your best bet. Someone else could offer an open source option though perhaps.
I agree to leave a review on the Appstores. However Garmin can censor the negative reviews if they want. So i recommend in addition to that leaving comments on social media, review webpages, videos where Garmin can’t delete the comments.
JFC, is nothing safe?
I was just talking about dumping Fitbit as Google destroys it and jumping to Garmin…
Me too. What now?
What now?
Some options:
- Gadget Bridge allows connecting most devices fully locally
- PineTime simple, but cheap and free of corporate nonsense
- RePebble (coming later this year) - I just learned and it in this thread, but it looks promising.
Maybe the problem is you
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.
Ugh, and so the enshittification begins…
It really sucks, they’ve been spared from noticeable enshitification so far but I guess the line didn’t go up enough anymore…
For the android users, just gonna put this here
Thank you. Installed for when I finally find my charger.
Not even Garmin can resist the temptation?
Oof, better hold out hope for Repebble I guessOoh. Thanks. Today I learned about RePebble. If it doesn’t deliver, there’s still also Gadget Bridge (connect most devices fully locally) and PineTime (another spiritual successor to the Pebble).
Oh, for fuck’s sake. We just bought our first Garmin watches two months ago. I felt uneasy about our new relationship with yet another american corporation, but we loved the watches and the app… And now what?
Don’t worry nothing has changed at all, this is a paid tier same as any other land grabbing company on the planet for new tech.
Nothing compares to their battery life and feature set for health data as a whole. Garmin seems to have tbe most comprehensive health data coverage of all smart watches.
They are a stand up company anytime I ever needed support which has been many times for family as well.
Don’t worry nothing has changed at all…
Yet
In time we will see, hopefully we keep a solid company around and chop this up to the whole land grab for AI thing.
Just as I was saying to myself “I’m pretty happy with the Garmin I have, I don’t need a new Pebble,” here come Pebble’s marketing department with a reason!
… What do you mean this is an announcement from Garmin?
I’ve bought Garmin devices explicitly because they didn’t do these things, and promised not to do these things. Since I know they’re not going to retract this decision, I am going to look into trying to get my purchases refunded.
This is taking it to heart for sure. Nothing wrong with your POV but it’s opinion and their tech has no comparison currently. Literally zero has changed. They added a paid tier and done what every company on the planet is doing. Trying to land grab AI because it’s the latest and greatest.
Garmin makes toilet paper, right?
Don’t know about tp, but they are certainly making shit now.
For fuckkkksss sake. Ill keep my garmin watch until it works but never buying another one. I was so happy to find a watch that had everything i needed. Actually huge shame…
For anyone else wondering, you can export all your Garmin data .Use the “Export All Garmin Data Using Account Management Center” option here https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=W1TvTPW8JZ6LfJSfK512Q8 The output is json files so you can use any json editor or anything that can import json. I use a little tool called JQ https://jqlang.org/ to extract just things I need. Then I can analyze in whatever tool I want such as a spreadsheet
There is also a Python module to pull your data.
