Garmin rolls out fresh update for popular smartwatches with Garmin Pay improvements

Only a few days have passed since Garmin delivered Beta Version 15.12 to the Instinct 3, Instinct 3 Solar, Instinct E, Instinct 3 Tactical and the Instinct Crossover AMOLED (curr. $649 on Amazon). While framed as a major update, it was unclear exactly what changes v15.12 contained compared to Garmin's older v15.11 and v15.08 updates.

Now, the company has returned with a new v15.xx update for Beta Program participants. This time, Garmin has transitioned development to Beta Version 15.13. Available as an over-the-air (OTA) update, Beta Version 15.13 is said to have already reached around 50% of eligible smartwatches within the first few hours.

If that is not the case for you, then you can trigger the download of Beta Version 15.13 manually by selecting 'Check for Updates' under System and then Software Update within the smartwatch's main Settings menu. In a forum post, Garmin explains that Beta Version 15.13 introduces a single change over its older v15.12 update.

Specifically, Beta Version 15.13 resolves a possible crash when attempting to add a bank card to Garmin Pay. Apparently, updating to Beta Version 15.13 eliminates this altogether on all Instinct 3 series smartwatches. The full changelog from Software Version 14.15, Garmin's most recent stable update, is as follows:

All Instinct 3/Instinct E:

• Improved gear suggestions for Hike activities.
• Fixed potential issue with Treadmill distance calibration.
• Fixed possible crash when adding card to Garmin Pay.

AMOLED only:

• Fixed issue where date could display incorrectly on the watch face in some languages (Tactical only).
• Fixed potential issue where sleep data would not display correctly in morning report in some languages.

AMOLED/Solar only:

• Added support for Xero range sensor data in the Applied Ballistics app (Tactical only).

Solar only: 

• Fixed Auto Select Satellites option missing from Power Manager.

Solar/Instinct E only:

• Fixed dog pointer direction in DogTrack glance.
• Fixed issue where CIQ data field was obscured.
• Fixed issue where watch face data field could be blank in some languages.