Garmin introduces battery life improvements to multiple smartwatches via new update

Earlier this week, Garmin released a new update for the Forerunner 570 and Forerunner 970, among other smartwatches. A beta build, Beta Version 18.14 contained over a dozen improvements compared to the feature-packed Beta Version 18.12 that came before it.

Now, Garmin has delivered a new stable update for the pair. As far as we can tell, the company is offering the same software simultaneously on the Venu 4, Venu X1 and the Vivoactive 6 too (curr. $299 on Amazon). However, Garmin has not rushed to finish v18.xx development. Instead, it has returned to its older v17.xx branch with the release of Software Version 17.37.

Across a series of forum posts, Garmin claims to have resolved three outstanding bugs that were present in Software Version 17.37. Arguably, the most important of these is an issue that resulted in 'shorter-than-expected' runtimes across the Forerunner 570, Forerunner 970, Venu 4, Venu X1 and the Vivoactive 6.

In other words, one should expect to see battery life improvements once updated to Software Version 17.37. Additionally, Garmin asserts that its new update deals with a bug that could cause smartwatches to reset during a golf activity. Finally, Software Version 17.37 also contains a fix for treadmill distance not being more accurate even after using the treadmill calibration service. Please see Garmin's forum for more details.