TL;DR
- Many Garmin customers have reported frequent watch face crashes, displaying an “IQ!” brand with an orange exclamation mark.
- The problem appears tied to a bug in Garmin’s Join IQ platform and will have been triggered by current firmware updates.
- Garmin has acknowledged the issue and is investigating, however there isn’t a clear timeline for a everlasting repair but.
For those who’ve invested in one in every of Garmin’s feature-packed smartwatches, you probably anticipated years of clean crusing. Nonetheless, over the previous few months, many Garmin customers have discovered themselves coping with a perplexing difficulty — random crashes that depart their watch faces frozen, displaying an ominous “IQ!” brand with an orange exclamation level.
First reported by Tech-Points As we speak, this downside has been quietly plaguing customers for months, however reviews counsel it’s spreading to much more Garmin fashions. And it’s not only one or two units — this bug has been noticed on common fashions just like the Venu 3, Forerunner 965, Fenix 7, and others.
On the coronary heart of the issue doubtlessly is a glitch in Garmin’s Join IQ platform, particularly the Storage.setValue() perform, which apps and watch faces depend on to save lots of knowledge. When this perform acts up, it causes affected watch faces to crash.
The crashes don’t observe a predictable sample, making them much more irritating. Some customers report their watches failing after receiving notifications, whereas others expertise random interruptions throughout common use. Even restarting your smartwatch solely affords short-term aid, because the crashes typically return, generally impacting different watch faces as effectively.
Person reviews throughout Reddit and Garmin boards hyperlink the problem to current firmware updates, together with variations 11.16 and 20.29, which appear to have triggered these crashes throughout a number of fashions. For builders, the bug has been nothing wanting a nightmare. One app creator reported practically 400,000 crashes of their app since August.
Garmin’s engineers have acknowledged the problem in response to person complaints. Nonetheless, they’ve talked about that constantly reproducing the issue has been a problem, which is hindering their investigation.
The scenario has left Garmin customers — and builders — understandably pissed off. For now, endurance is the one answer as everybody waits for Garmin to roll out a repair. The corporate has a superb observe file of addressing points like these, so there’s hope that aid is on the horizon.