Garmin's –$40B Pivot

Apple to me has clearly a goal of providing a tiny version of smart phone on your wrist. Garmin aims at as-smart-as-possible watch. Everything else comes from this philosophy, be it battery, design of not only display and it shape etc.

Different people prefer different things, for me its definitely the smart watch part. I am rather sporty, and tbh don't care about phone capabilities on my wrist, when I have it in the pocket/on the desk, that 1s lost when reaching for it is fine.

Premium price, premium look, massively better battery, durability, option of solar charging etc. I am taking poster child in Garmin Fenix 8 since they have very wide range of products compared to Apple. Fenix 8 is also much prettier than Apple's ultra wrist brick but thats subjective I guess. Diving capabilities for casual divers like me are just cherry on top, saving me some 300-400 for good enough (but otherwise completely useless) diving computer, minimizing yet-another-device syndrome.

Many people get more than 3/4 day. For the Series 10 that 18 hours of battery is based on 300 time checks, 90 notifications, 15 minutes of using apps, and a 60-minute workout with music playback from the watch via Bluetooth. For watches without cellular it also assumes 18 hours of Bluetooth connection to a phone. For watches with cellular it assumes 14 hours of Bluetooth connection to a phone and 4 hours of LTE cellular connection.

I've got mine set to charge to 80%, and over 23.5 hours it typically falls to somewhere in the 30-40% range. I put it on the charger for 30 minutes when I sit on my couch in the evening to watch Jeopardy! and do the NYT crossword puzzle. That's plenty of time to get it back to 80%.

I do have the always on display turned off, so the display only comes on when I turn the watch to look at it or tap or click. Always on display would take more power but my recollection from before turning it off is that it would still easily make it 23.5 hours starting from 80%. With a 20 W charger it can go from 0 to 80% in 30 minutes, so that would still be done by the time I finished Jeopardy and the crossword.

(I didn't turn off always on display to save battery. I turned it off because I didn't really find it useful. When I'm not actively checking the watch I almost hold it in a position where I don't really have a good look at the display, and moving it so I can get a good look almost always would be enough to turn it on in "raise to wake" mode).

By and large Garmin devices can be accessed directly from a Linux system. I have a FR 965 and it connects just fine.

But in typical Garmin fashion, there may be a hard to find setting to enable this. My watch asks if I want to connect to a computer when I plug in the cable.

Oh man so many... inaccuracies to be polite in 1 post.

My wife uses GPS all the time, why else you would buy premium watch like Fenix for. Apple watch needs charging / daily/bi-daily. Garmins of my wife who even sleeps with them with monitoring on - every 5-6 days, after cca 4 years of ownership already with same battery. You can definitely wear them all the time, and if you can't, same goes for other watch as well. This is what these watches are for if you still have issues understanding their market proposition, long term usage, without battery anxiety and additional management of frequent charging.

They can have eSim, but I really don't see a reason and the price to pay in terms of battery drain is too steep. I don't know anybody around who is using it, everybody still have their phone with them.

If I want to be reachable, there is phone which I can put into any pocket, if I want some quiet peace time, I can just listen to the music streamed from watch. I would never rely on tiny watch with crappy battery and super tiny cellular antenna re safety ie in wilderness or mountains where signal is non-ideal.