New Garmin beta update arrives for popular smartwatches

Garmin is rolling out a new beta update for the Instinct 3 AMOLED, Instinct 3 Solar, Instinct E, Instinct 3 Tactical, and Instinct Crossover smartwatches. Beta version 16.06 arrives around a week after its predecessor, version 16.05, which did not appear to bring any new features to these wearables.

The change log for Garmin beta version 16.06 indicates that it brings a bug fix linked to the Instinct 3 and related smartwatches’ DogTrack glance, which can show information from a connected dog tracking handheld. A problem which meant the pointer did not update as expected has been resolved.

The other changes listed in the release notes were seen in the 16.04 beta update, the first in the 16.xx testing cycle. These include the addition of the Recovery Mode feature and improved wave detection for the Surf activity. You can find the complete change log in the screenshot below.

In a recent post on the Garmin Forum, a representative for the company stated that this was an over-the-air update, which had already been pushed to around 20% of users of the Instinct 3 (AMOLED 45mm curr. $349.99 at Amazon) and related smartwatches. It remains to be seen when a stable version of software version 16.xx will be released to all users of these Garmin wearables.