“Wear OS” and “crazy battery life” do not go in the same sentence.
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This… It’s getting better but is not looking great
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I know. But at some point you need to make the jump from a semi smart watch to a smart watch, at least for some models. Garmin currently trades more limited, focussed functionality for much better battery life. I don’t think this can go on in perpetuity, at least not for all of Garmin’s models.
People will come to expect e. g. contactless payments, support for music and podcasts, and voice support. Because wear OS and watch OS have been doing that for ages now. I also think that in the long run, Garmin needs an app ecosystem, which in a way extend Garmin’s person power on the platform side. Otherwise, things like proper glucose monitoring and insulin pump integration are unlikely to happen.
If I were Garmin, my vision would be to make it the sports-centric wear OS device. I’d pick a floor of roughly 3 days battery life (roughly the same as the Apple Watch Ultra), add support for fast charging like the latest Apple Watches and work up from there. Fast charging alleviates a lot of the battery life concerns. If the charge you get during a shower will last you through another day, I think most people will be fine.
From what I have read, wear OS is not as great as watch OS when it comes to battery life and watch-specific SoCs/SiPS are revved only very slowly. (To be fair, Apple didn’t change their SiP in I think 4 years, they just incremented the number and hoped nobody would notice.) There is also uneasiness because Google has acquired FitBit.
I’ve never used them (as I don’t really care for those features) but Garmin already has contactless on some (maybe even most?) of their watches - and they have music (spotify and others) on most of their watches these days.
Admittedly it Garmin Pay support is pretty limited, depending on your country - that’s a business development issue rather than a hardware and services one.
I agree with the comments about Garmin having to make a switch to Android Wear OS if they want to compete in the smart watch space on some of their watches.
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I think this is a good example of a regulatory challenge. I don’t think it is hard, but you need to scale to a lot of countries. Even Google falls way short of Apple, and Apple isn’t great either: rolling out services to other countries. If you live in a tier 1 country such as Germany or Japan, it is alright. But anything below and it gets tricky. When are Austria and Denmark getting those features?
Music is a similar problem, it isn’t about programming an mp3 player, it is about music rights.
Then there are special cases. At least a few years back there was a special Japan version of Apple’s iPhones and Watches that came with (hardware) support for the metro pass standard. A huge company like Apple can solve this problem with person power in ways Garmin cannot.
That’s why I would probably leave those issues to a company like Google.
Yeah the payment problem is also that they need to go to every financial services provider individually to get them on board. Garmin have a lot of supported banks in the USA, but relatively few outside of that. They’ll never be able to compete with Apple in that space, simply because the brand recognition isn’t there.
I’d imagine music licensing isnt really Garmin’s problem - as you can use Spotify app on their devices. There’s Amazon Music and deezer support as well (and you can move your own MP3 files onto the watch).
Here’s a link to all their supported music services:
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Just out of curiosity, has anyone tried this FTP estimate on WatchOs 10 and compared that with TR AI FTP ?
I saw a YouTube video (DesFit was the YouTuber) and his data were like 70W lower with Apple Watch FTP https://youtu.be/2Ficbhrt_hg?si=guekBM8CVxx9knbH
(around 7:50 he compares FTPs with Garmin and TR)
I 100% agree with this. I use an Apple watch 8 for Stryd running workouts either outdoors, or on a treadmill. Once planned workouts are pre loaded to my calendar, I just put my shoes on, touch the app on the watch and away I go, zero faff! Somethings like this for trainerroad workouts would be very convenient either indoor or outdoor.
When I do a cycling workout indoors, I sometimes just jump on my Peloton bike depending on what time I have and the type of workout e.g z2, tempo, ss, as it is ready to go. Having to connect an ipad, phone or laptop to zwift / trainerroad etc and put a separate HR monitor on when I use my bike on the trainer… ensure I am all connected etc sounds easy but it is a slight hassle. If I could just press a button on a watch I am already wearing that has HR included I would probably do it for most workouts… There is definitely a market for those looking for convenience.
Does this solve your concern?
I see the same as Des. TR has me around 305w, and Garmin around 290ish or so. Apple has me at 240w.
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Someone should record a ramp test on the Apple Watch and report back.
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And in this article a big difference like yours and Des is mentioned
I’ve done a Ramp test and Recorded it on the Apple Watch (I was 3 weeks ago and was using the Beta version of the software) and it came out 40 watts lower, my experience seems the same as others, well out
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For 4 months a year where I live, I’m wearing arm warmers or long sleeve jersey/jacket. A watch is useless to me while training. Furthermore my experiences with bluetooth connections on my bikes are terrible. Bluetooth is banned from my bikes, besides, any inroads Apple makes into cycling will come with trying to put our data behind their garden wall and charge feature subscriptions. No thanks. BTW I own and use an Apple Desktop, Laptop, Iphone and an Ultra watch, so I’m not anti Apple.
??? I’ve gone to the grocery store and my apps pulled the cycling workout from Health with all the data (power, cadence, speed, and HR from watch). Strava needs updating, it didn’t grab the gps data. But other apps read it just as if it came from a bike computer.
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Great for going to the grocery store. This summer I rode 2 rides over 8 hours and several that lasted ovef 5 hours. Current Apple products just don’t fit rides like that.
Well yeah, I have a bike computer for several reasons. And I’d rather not take my bike computer to the grocery store or gym.
My point is that all the data isn’t locked up in some walled garden. TrainingPeaks pulled it right out of Health. Strava tried but it needs an update. Garmin refuses to pull anything out of Health, but that’s on Garmin.
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IMO the walls around the Garmin garden are much higher. If you want to automatically upload the workout data to Garmin Connect, the only way is to use a Garmin device.
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The walled garden effect won’t begin till Apple has some traction in the space. At this point, they have very little. I also don’t leave my Garmin on the bike when locked at the grocery store. I don’t expect Apple to gain traction among cyclists with a watch. It’s dangerous to be looking at a watch while riding. I wear my AW for the cellular, and the accident alerts. One glaring example of how Apple develops the walled garden effect is the Itunes to apple music transition. It’s their template: Free capability gradually turning into subscription service. Technically, Itunes still exists, but has become almost unusable, and pretty much unsupported.
I love a good Saturday morning conspiracy theory 
Regarding iTunes to Music, I dunno, I’m still playing all the songs I ripped from CDs. And Spotify basically took over the space, and Music is Apple’s answer to that. Thats my view.