Garmin Users Say Their Watches Are Bricked With a 'Blue Triangle of Death'

Garmin smartwatches are freezing in boot loops, users are reporting globally, with devices displaying a "blue triangle of death" when attempting GPS activities, affecting models across the Epix, Venu, Forerunner, Descent, and Fenix lines.

Wait...

[The-Ixian]

Did CrowdStrike take over management of these devices?

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[Big Hairy Gorilla]

ha ha. you read my mind.

just a reminder, people, giving all your vital signs to a for profit corporation is a bad idea for your privacy. They will probably re-sell it to insurance companies or Law Enforcement. Data doesn't really have a shelf life, so today's data can be used against you any time in the future.

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[NewtonsLaw]

No, it's just a somewhat delayed Y2K bug that took just over quarter of a century to kick-in :-)

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[ls671]

I guess those watches look really smart now although.

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[Tablizer]

Naaah, we can't blame everything on The Tinted One. Only 90%.

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[gtall]

Yes we can. When Biden was in office, la Presidenta and the Maggots blamed him for everything. Now we get to blame la Presidenta.

Copyright infringement

[ISoldat53]

Isn't "Blue xxx of Death" a Microsoft's copyright?

AFAIK This is not new

[toxonix]

I've had my Garmin Instinct go into crash loops while turning on GPS features. If I forget to turn the GPS on before leaving shore it gets kinda risky to be messing around with a watch while sailing through boat traffic, rock hazards, waves, gusts and wind shifts, etc...
The Instinct is kinda the cheapest GPS watch. I bet the hardware is pretty much the same inside, the only difference between the big $$ watches is the fancy UI/screen size.

The Fix

[chill]

I had this happen this morning to a Forerunner 165. Plug the device in via USB to your computer, then do a hard reset -- select/back/light, push and hold until it beeps then the triangle fades. The watch will reboot.

Not sure what triggered it, but I then used Garmin Express to ensure the watch firmware was up to date. Seems to still be working.

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[shanen]

Thanks for the focus on solutions. Still not sure if I want to buy another Garmin, even though I am in the market now...

Maybe it will help to share my own experiences and possibly elicit other anecdotal data? I was actually wearing a Garmin on the same wrist as a new Huawei when I had a little event that smashed the Huawei. At that time the Garmin was fading and because of other problems I decided to replace the broken Huawei with the one I'm still wearing. The Garmin actually lasted a while longer before t

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[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I'm more worried about the super-international google than the Chinese pseudo-commies?

No need to worry, friend, you'll be glad to know that there's a significant overlap between those two entities. You can worry about either one and still cover both bases.

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[gavron]

> ....I then used Garmin Express...

https://forums.garmin.com/apps... [garmin.com]

Smart watches are such shit though

[TheMiddleRoad]

Good for running, but that's about it.

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[ak3ldama]

Yes, but they're amazing for running. I have an older (series 3?) apple watch. The core OS no longer updates, but the app for nike run club sure did. It broke itself. The NRC app depends on a newer version of the OS. I refused to buy a new one out of spite. I now run a lot less than I did in '23, I'm a hair over 40 years old and now I just take the dog on more walks. But it still sucks, I loved running with the watch and the NRC integration. Our dog is a Beagle so he is pretty near impossible to take on jog

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[aitikin]

Good for running, but that's about it.

I appreciate mine for cycling and strength training tracking as well (yeah, sometimes I lose count of my reps, so sue me). Better accuracy than my cell phone just tracking through the woods when I'm on a ride and does a damned good job of tracking my heart rate (I've compared it to the old school chest band monitor and it's as accurate in my experience).

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[Potor]

I have a FR 255 Music, and I find that it is only passable for lifting. But for running it is brilliant.

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[Gilgaron]

These Garmins have real GPS, though, so they're useful out of cell range in the mountains hiking. They can even backfeed the location data into the phone so you can use it for larger maps than the watch screen can display and so on.

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[Potor]

A Garmin is not a smartwatch. The Forerunner, for instance, is a running watch. And as a tool for that thing - it is nonpareil. I understand it is also brilliant for biking and swimming, but I don't use it for those.

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[svx]

Great for pretty much every outdoor activity. If you went outside, you would have known.

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[jbmartin6]

The shit here is what you are full of. :P I've used my Garmin extensively and never run a step. Cycling, hiking, etc. I suppose if you edited your statement to say 'Good for supplementing outdoor activities, but that's about it' you would be closer to correct. But that hardly establishes that the whole product category is "shit"

31-bit date?

[Equuleus42]

Grasping for straws here, but if Garmin used a signed 31-bit integer for their smartwatch date processing, and they used an epoch of January 19, 1991, it would overflow right about now... coincidentally they set up their first dedicated manufacturing facility and sold their first product to the US Army in 1991 [wikipedia.org].

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[Poisonous Drool]

No, it is a bad GPS file

This fix worked for my Forerunner 255

[Poisonous Drool]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Garmi... [reddit.com]

But software is hard

[presearch]

Well, they can't test everything.

Not bricked, it's fixable

[technomom]

If you get to the boot loop, you can reset the device according to its factory reset instructions. Not a great solution, but it isn't bricked. get th

If you don't the bootloop, you can fix it with a Connect/Sync cycle on your watch.

Bricked, by definition, means unfixable, as in "turn it into a brick". This, while not great, isn't bricked.