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I love my Garmin Fenix 7 watch. Built in surf session tracking is superb. Lots of other cool features, solar charging and over a week of battery for my use. I ditched my Apple watch for it.

Having said that, one dangerous area where Garmin is missing a boat is their Garmin IQ store - that ecosystem is basically dead with very few useful apps.

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One one hand i absolutely agree. But on the other, has anybody, Apple included, figured out any terribly useful apps for a watch that doesn’t already come built in or partner with a phone?

Well, at least pre-Ultra, Apple was rather deficient in outdoor activity apps including hiking. But that may now be moot with the Ultra. (And the Ultra probably explains Apple's benign neglect of this area prior.)

Yeah, this is my only complaint about my Fenix 6. Total lack of any kind of app ecosystem. I don't even know how they'd manage to create one without some sort of open standard for delivering richer notifications to watches or something. It's a bummer.

Doesn't help that you have to write apps in their proprietary language.

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