Here I was just minding my own business trying to take photos for my Instinct 3 review, when some, but not all, of the watches kept crashing and rebooting every time I opened up the sport menu. Little did I know, this was the beginnings of a very bad day for Garmin. The end of which, isn’t yet known.
But for now, here’s what’s happening.
The details:
Currently, a wide spectrum of watches are crashing/rebooting when a user opens up anything that starts/triggers the GPS. The watch list includes, but is very much not limited to:
– Garmin Descent series (newer models)
– Garmin Forerunner 165/255/265/955/965
– Garmin Epix Series
– Garmin Fenix 7/8 Series
– Garmin Instinct 3 Series
– Garmin Tactix 7 Series
– Garmin Vivoactive 4/5 Series
– Garmin Venu 3 Series
I say ‘not limited to’, because Garmin hasn’t provided a list. Instead, the ‘Internet at Large’ has, via countless forums & social media sites. Roughly speaking, this list appears to align to devices using Garmin’s current GPS chipset.
In terms of the crashes, it’s specific to anytime you open up the sport list, attempting to start a GPS-based sport. Or, for any other app that accesses GPS. This includes:
– Starting the sport menu to see a list of GPS spots
– Opening a GPS sport
– Opening the ‘Navigate’ app
– Opening the ‘Tides’ app and choosing nearest location
– Attempting to do anything with navigation/routing/etc…
All of which will result in the watch rebooting, back to the watch face. Even attempting to get an indoor (non-GPS) activity can be tricky, as depending on the exact model, it’ll immediately start searching for GPS in the background while you choose the sport mode. However, in my experience if you tap to the indoor mode and select it quick enough, you’ll be OK.
The Cause & Fix:
So what’s the fix? Well, there isn’t one yet. Garmin has put up a notice on its support pages, with a workaround in the event your somehow in a crash loop, though, this really isn’t a fix. It just gets you back to the watch face:
So what’s the cause?
My guess here is likely the same cause it was a four years ago when this happened: The satellite pre-cache file (also called the CPE or EPO file). Basically that’s the file that the GPS chipset uses to more quickly find GPS satellites. In a world before pre-cache files, it would take 20-60 seconds. Now, it takes 1-3 seconds. Think of it like a cheat-sheet for the sky/satellites.
That file gets updated every few days, and generally goes stale within a week. However, if a bad version of the file gets delivered, then chaos can ensue – as we saw a few years ago, when it impacted far more than just Garmin, but also Suunto, Polar, Wahoo, COROS, and others on the Sony chipset at the time. In the case of back-then, this resulted in offset GPS tracks, rather than instant restarts of the watch.
The fix at the time was to force a sync of this file, once the proper/correct version was available. Of course, getting that file to sync when an existing file already exists might be tricky. Assuming this is the issue.
What’s Next:
In short, there’s literally nothing you can do to fix your watch right now. If your watch is currently working, I’d recommend temporarily disabling both Bluetooth & WiFi on your watch, since that’ll keep it a little island undo itself (though, it’s likely Garmin has already pulled any bad/corrupted files from the servers).
I’ll update this post accordingly. In the meantime, seems like a good day for an yoga session. Or, you can pickup that awesome Dumpster Fire stuffed animal (or coffee cup) my wife got me for Christmas. Perfect timing.
Thanks for reading!
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