Garmin offers up fresh improvements to flagship smartwatches with new update

The Fenix 7 series and its peers have received yet another update on Garmin's Beta Program. For context, the new build follows equivalents for the Venu 3, Venu 3S and Vivoactive 5 that appeared within the last few days. While those all featured relatively short changelogs, the same is not the case for the Fenix 7's Beta Version 16.13.

Ultimately, Beta Version 16.13 features fewer changes than Beta Version 16.10 and has the same number of changes as Beta Version 16.11. For some reason, Garmin elected against publishing Beta Version 16.12 publicly. According to the company's forum post, Beta Version 16.13 contains mostly bug fixes. For example, the company claims to have addressed CIQ animation issues and the inability to add double spaces in the keyboard.

Additionally, Beta Version 16.13 should fix a bug that could switch on the flashlight during a treadmill activity. Moreover, the update also excludes chairlift data within ski and snowboard activity summaries. Currently, Garmin is issuing Beta Version 16.13 in a 'phased rollout' for Epix 2, Enduro 2, Fenix 7, Quatix 7 and most MARQ Gen 2 smartwatches. Although the update has only reached 40% of devices at the time of writing, you can request the new update ahead of schedule by heading to Menu - System - Software Update - Check for Updates. Please see Garmin's forum post for more details and the list below for Beta Version 16.13's changelog.

• Fixed CIQ animations.
• Fixed inability to do double spaces in the keyboard.
• Fixed display of respiration rate in the Breathwork activity summary information.
• Fixed issue with city search where some cities would not be found.
• Fixed issue with Jump Rope when it is the single favorite activity.
• Fixed issue with MARQ 2 Captain watch face wind indicator.
• Fixed potential issue where flashlight could enable during a treadmill activity.
• Fixed potential issue where the weather app would show blank pages; forecast data will now be visible when valid.
• Improved display of ski/snowboard activity summaries to exclude chairlift data.

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