Garmin offers insight into state of new stable update for Fenix 7 and co with latest beta build

Garmin has delivered a new update for the Fenix 7 (curr. $399 - renewed on Amazon) and associated smartwatches. To recap, the company rolled out System Software 23.18 over a month ago with over a dozen bug fixes.

As we discussed at the time, the update also introduced a few other improvements, like being able to pair certain sensors over ANT and BLE+. Initially, Garmin hoped that System Software 23.18 would bring an end to 23.xx beta development. However, reality has not played out quite like Garmin had hoped.

Instead, it quickly returned to 23.xx beta development with bug fixes that had been missed previously. Initially, the company issued Beta Version 23.22 before offering Beta Version 23.24 a few days ago. Based on their release cadence, it seemed that perhaps Beta Version 23.24 would be Garmin's second go at transitioning 23.xx development to its stable software program.

The appearance of Beta Version 23.28 has put that idea to bed, though. Despite skipping three interim build numbers, Beta Version 23.28 only fixes an issue where IR messages to multiple contacts would fail to send. Not only that, but Dive and ECG features remain disabled. Thus, we can reasonably expect Garmin to introduce another 23.xx beta build before returning with a fresh 23.xx stable update. Unfortunately, it remains to be seen when either will occur for the time being.