Having your gps time-out on you might be lethal. Imagine an hypothetical auto update bricking all gps devices in the group on a mountain top or the sea and relying on a compass and map if you were smart enought to bring it.
Not having a gps makes many endouvers just that much more risky.
Garmins update by USB, not GPS. There's no way for them to push an update to you on top of a mountain or in the middle of the sea.
Also, when I plug my Garmin watch into my computer by USB, it just brings up a USB mass storage device. I could drag a new firmware image over if I had one, but it's not going to auto-update and time out. I last updated in 2016, it's been going strong since 2013. Incidentally, battery capacity is down significantly, but it still lasts multiple days and multiple workouts.
They're actually really well engineered against accidental automatic bricking and loss of function, unlike most IoT devices and websites.
Does Garmin or any other GPS vendors have auto-update? Most of my wearables require me to confirm the incoming update (scheduled at night while charging) or I have to plug it into my computer.
Most Garmin wearable devices can be configured to auto update. If the servers are online they will download new firmware via WiFi or Bluetooth and then install automatically. You can disable that feature.
If you're in signal service for an update, you have alternatives. If you have no alternatives, you're out of range of updates. The sorts of devices involved (and here I'm thinking of the GPSMAP series and friends) don't do over-the-air updates anyway, and don't rely on networked mapping services. Maps are stored on the device before you ever leave the house.
Ye. I do alot of sailing and did it in the 90s and early 00s with only map and compass, so I know how hard it is. Without gps you need to sail in such a way that you are in line with landmarks etc. With gps you can roam freely.
If you are out on the sea and the gps dies and you have not been tracking the paper map you are lost, so GPS are in practice realy critical devices. Especially since many sailors nowadays might be rusty on map navigation.
I mean garmin have high quality and I agree people need to not trust electronoc tools too much and be too dependent on them
Not having a gps makes many endouvers just that much more risky.
Edit: made it clear it is a hypothetical scenario