Garmin Woes

I´ve been, during months, an Edge 610, Edge 800 and more recently an Edge 810 user. When using the 810, i´ve lost some confidence in the Garmin brand.
I would like to have a gps that helps me train, that encourages me to get on the bike... Currently what i´ve got is a gps that i dont trust on, that everytime i want to go out and ridem i have to wait some minutes so that it updates the activity list from the web and that in the middle of the track it turns off without warning...

Edge 810 - hardware issues:

• The screen is unreadable under direct sunlight, and even without direct sun incidence, the data is hard to read at a quick glance. It requires focusing carefully on the gps with the associated risk it carries (even more if you try to read the little warnings that appear on the bottom area with black background)
• It doen´t support GLONASS 
• The temperature sensor is inaccurate (+/- 2 Celsius).
• Even considering the battery is quite good, there is plenty of space inside the case to have a larger capacity battery... A 1600mAh would be 1mm wider and longer, 2g heavier, a few cents of increased cost and 6 more hours of autonomy. I haven´t tried to replace the battery myself with a larger capacity one, even if it would be very easy to do , i´m not sure the included fuel gauge IC would be happy with it (risk is wrong remaining batt display in the software).. I´ll try this soon
• It doesn´t have a magnetometer, and specially in MTB unknown trails, it would be very nice to have a proper map rotation when unit rotates.
• I don´t like the rubber seals on the usb connector and microSD slot. I think it would be safer to have those in the same area as the bike mount so that when unit is mounted on the bike, its impossible to get loose and let water/dust in
• It only accepts ANT+ sensors while BT is not. The included CC2567 IC supports BTLE so that it might be just a software shortcoming
• It doesn´t have an ambient light sensor. Having it would save some battery by keeping the backlight permanently off during daytime and bringing the backlight on automatically inside tunnels or dense low light forest areas
• It doesnt have an accelerometer or a gyroscope which without a doubt would be helpful to better calculate the ascent grade and would also allow to log/show some nice info like G forces, accelerations, braking etc
• No tiene acelerómetro ni giróscopo que sin duda podrían utilizarse para calcular la pendiente de las cuestas de manera más precisa y podrían mostrarse/registrarse datos como fuerzas G, aceleraciones, frenadas 

Edge 810 - software issues (versión 2.7)

• It doesn´t have a watchdog that would restart the activity automatically after a system crash. GPS should never crash, but as it does why not doing it in a way that minimizes the troubles? Currently, when it crashes, it turns itself off and remains off until the user realizes and manually have to turn it on then wait for it to boot up then restarting the acitvity so that it continues recording as it was before crashing.
• Livetrack can´t be started/restarted from the gps itlself
• Turn by turn navigation would crash the gps randomly
• Turn by turn navigation does not calculate the track correctly and would shortcut to the finish line when using a circular course
• Turn by turn navigation stops working very often. It would just stop showing the arrows and providing offcourse alerts
• The virtual partner would often take shortcuts and go to the finish line in seconds instead of following the full track
• If a course is not loaded for navigation the elevation profile does not work (not even for the past ridden track)
• Remaining battery percentage does not show the same value in status bar and the data fields (data field is usually 4% lower)
• Map colors cant be changed
• If user has more than one bike, the gps should detect a specific to each bike sensor (cadence or power sensor) and switch to the given bike profile (or at least prompt the user) when sensor activity is detected
• If the bike has a speed/cadence sensor installed, the gps will use the wheel rotation to calculate distance which in some cases is wrong. If the wheel magnet is accidentally moved during a ride, the wheel turn might not be detected at all or detected some times only so the recorded distance would be incorrect. Gps should detect movement from the sats and discard wheel speed info if its clearly wrong
• scent/descent rate calculation is innacurate. When starting to climb, the grade shows a very low percentage while when starting to descend it shows a pretty high value. In places where there are continuous climbs and descents, info is just garbage... It would be better to show the value only when its known to be correct (after gathering enough distance/ascent data to calculate the grade correctly)
• I don´t use a power meter but many users in the garmin forums have complainted about the edge 810 dropping power data randomly
• The gps does not come with a hardware verification routine. I would like to run a stress testing function to verify the cpu, ram and flash works up to spec (perhaps garmin know a lot of units would be RMA if this function is provided)
• The unit does not verify its sensors. There are some users reporting impossibly high or low altimeter or temperature readings which means the sensors are faulty and the gps does not alarm the user 
• the unit should show on the screen the caller party when a call comes in. Many times, a call comes in and we just ignore it because the phone is in the back pocket/backpack and it could be important call

Iphone App

• Livetrack stops working without any warning from time to time. In my particular case, my wife uses the livetrack feature to follow me when i go riding alone. When livetrack stops without warning -> wife realizes it stopped -> wife stresses as it doesnt work again -> wife calls to check everything is alright -> call is ignored because i think is a telemarketer -> wife stresses more and calls again -> i ignore it again -> then call again and i just stop and upon answering it reinforces my idea that a faulty livetrack implementation is worse that not having anything in the first place
• Livetrack usually needs more than 1/2 hour (luckily) to start. The iphone app gives priority to downloading past activities from the web over the livetrack function. Thats bad enough but it gets worse when the iphone deletes daily every activity so that it will redownload the whole year again every day. In my case, i have around 80 activities in 2013 and it would take around 1/2 hour to download them when im at home using broadband wifi.. over 3G i would just forget about it
• Upon finishing and saving the activity, the phone is supposed to automatically upload data to the Garmin Connect site but it doesn´t work as advertised.. It usually takes 2-3 days to do it and in some cases, after a week i end up uploading them manually. This feature is useless in its current form

Garmin Connect

• They added a "Feedback" button on the last update (june '13). This has 2 issues: on one hand when using an ipad the blue feedback button keeps in the middle of the screen when scrolling the page.. its very annoying and on the other hand, feedback data provided by users seems to go nowhere as i´ve made couple of inputs and havent heard from them in long time.. not even a receipt acknowledgement.
• Creating courses usually throws an error "This course could not be created" and when retrying a dozen times it magically works... It seems their server is overloaded
• If the gps crashes (and some times without crashing), the FIT activity file gets corrupt and the web wont allow you to upload it. Third party websites allow you to autorepair the FIT file and the Garmin Connect happily takes the file... Why not having Garmin Connect autofixing the file itself instead of making you solve the problem elsewhere?

Given that the only 2 features that make the Edge 810 better than the 800 are: Livetrack and auto uploading activities dont work, its better to save money and keep the old Edge 800.

The worst part is that Garmin seems to not care at all. Livetrack worked a lot better before updating the iphone app to 1.2, there are numerous upset users in forums.garmin.com and still, 2 months after the upgrade there no fix, and there no even a way to rollback the software and keep having a working device. Ive submitted a ticket in the support area, they sent me a receipt ack saying they would get back to me in 48h and more than a month gone by without Garmin doing anything.. not even a "we know the issue and are working to fix it" email.... a shame

UPDATE 11/05/2013: iphone app version 1.2.1 does not fix any of the described bugs. Garmin says this version fixes bugs but i don´t really know which ones as the big ones are still there.