May 8, 2022

Pairing the Garmin 66i with a cell phone

I have had my 66i for about a year, and only today am able to pair it with a smart phone.

The trouble was that the Garmin connect app would not run on my old android phone. I found this irritating, but other factors have finally forced me to get a new phone, namely a Pixel 6.

This runs Android 12, and hence happily runs Garmin connect. I already paired my instinct watch, and now want to get my 66i hooked up.

I launch garmin connect on the phone and go to "Garmin Devices".
I turn on the 66i, go to the main menu, select setup, then blue tooth. I turn blue tooth on and see "connecting".

On my phone I go to the 66i, and select "start". It tells me to watch the 66i for a code to appear. The screen does dim as though something happened, but no code

I had previously paired it with an iPad, I select "forget phone", and try again. It sends the serial number to my phone, but the process seems to be going endlessly and getting nowhere.

Ah, now I discover the trick. I need to tap on that serial number to tell it that is the phone I want to pair with. It seems to be continuing as it should now. Now it wants to sync the device. I exit a pending blue tooth pairing dialog (we already did that, eh?). It failed.

I go into bluetooth, turn blue tooth on and retry the sync. It says I am all set. I allow garmin connect to run in the background to stay synced.

What about software updates?

They say this will be handled automatically behind the scenes by Garmin connect and cannot be done manually. So this is an act of faith apparently and there seems to be no way to know when, if, or whether an update is available, has been installed, or anything at all about this (which seems awkward and stupid).

They do say that I may be prompted to install updates, so I may get some hint that an update has arrived. I turn my device off and on again and get no such notice, so ... nothing so far apparently.

Overnight

I leave my phone and 66i next to each other overnight. In the morning, I turn the 66i off and on again, and when I turn it on, lo and behold, it wants to install an update!

Part of the update process involves repairing it. I have to remove the 66i both from Garmin connect and from my phones bluetooth settings first.

To find out what version was just installed, I go to:
Main Menu, Settings, About.
"About" is at the very end.
It shows version 9.00 (631858)


Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's backpacking pages / [email protected]