But it sounds like it can’t stream music over LTE, so what exactly is the point?
Garmin has made plenty of smartwatches in recent years, and today the company is introducing its first with LTE. It’s an update to the existing, awkwardly-named Garmin Vivoactive 3 Music that can connect to Verizon’s LTE network for a variety of features including text messaging, some safety-focused features and, naturally, music. Although judging by Garmin’s press release, the music streaming capabilities sound rather unintuitive.
As with the non-LTE version of the Vivoactive 3 Music, the new model works with Spotify and Deezer. But rather than let users access their library and playlists to stream whatever they want from the watch, Garmin only says users can “download their favorite songs or playlists.” Rather than work at standalone apps, it sounds like you’ll still need to decide what music you want to sync to your watch from your phone first. That would mean that adding LTE to the equation adds exactly nothing to the music experience on this watch.
That’s disappointing, but the LTE-capable Vivoactive 3 Music does have a few tricks that might justify paying Verizon for a data plan. Chief among those is a safety feature that lets users send an alert to pre-selected emergency contacts; sending that security alert also turns on real-time location tracking so an emergency contact knows where you are at all times. There’s also a non-emergency “LiveTrack” setting that lets your contacts see where you are while you’re out on a workout. Finally, the watch’s “incident tracking” feature can detect unusual impacts when the user is running, walking or biking and will again alert your emergency contacts and share your real-time location.
As for other communication features, Garmin mentions text messaging in its press release, but offered zero details on whether users could send messages from the watch or only receive notifications from incoming SMS. The only other LTE-capable feature the company mentions is its Garmin Pay virtual wallet, definitely a handy feature to have on a smartwatch. But based on this initial info, it’s hard to see how LTE really adds anything to the experience aside from the safety and tracking features. We’ll check the device out here at CES to see if we can get any more details on how music playback works and anything else the Vivoactive 3 Music can do with its LTE connect. But as there’s no price or release date yet, anyone interested will probably do just fine with the existing model.
