Fenix 5 Plus release only days away, upgrades include Music, Garmin Pay and Galileo

Pics have been leaked of the upcoming Garmin Fenix 5 Plus from multiple sources. This would indicate that its a matter of days now or perhaps weeks before the product gets an official release. The end of June has been mentioned as a possible launch date, while Amazon Spain lists June 18th as the release date.

Fenix 5 was announced at CES 2017 and rolled out in the Spring. The company usually only has major updates every other year, so we’re not expecting Fenix 6 to arrive until the start of 2019. CES 2019 is the most likely launch platform. We are also expecting a special, incremental edition, to be released this Summer.

This has been more or less confirmed now, albeit by unofficial means. Pics of Fenix 5 Plus have been posted on Reddit and it seems the new watch is coming with built-in storage for music, Garmin Pay, Galileo and topoactive maps preloaded on all models. This is on top, of course, of everything you get on the Fenix 5, the usual hardware fixes, performance improvements and anything else Garmin might have up its sleeve.

The music storage will be ported from the Forerunner 645 Music so expect 4GB of memory which is enough room for about 500 songs. Garmin Pay is finding its way on all new Garmin devices so its not surprising its making its debut on the Fenix range. And Galileo now joins GPS and GLONASS for ever better navigation. Other features include smart notification with quick answers directly from the watch and PulseOX for the calculation of oxygen saturation, but this last one is only for the 5X version.

All three iterations of the Fenix 5 will benefit from the upgrade. Which means a Fenix 5 Plus, Fenix 5s Plus and Fenix 5x Plus should all land soon.

To add credence to the rumours, Garmin itself has listed the Fenix 5 Plus on its website. Its Garmin Pay page showed the device alongside Vivoactive 3 and Forerunner 645 as the third smartwatch to integrate the payment service. The reference and pictures were quickly removed but you can see an image of the orange band Fenix 5 Plus variant in this article.

Another leak comes courtesy of Amazon Spain. This even allows you to pre-order to new device and lists June 18th as the launch date. The specs mention Music, European Topographical maps and Garmin Pay. The listing goes into detail about a new feature called “Garmin Explore Portal” (translated from Spanish). This is a place to synchronise all your navigation data such as routes, waypoints, and share them automatically with your friends. A useful feature for hikers, no doubt.

The next logical spec is for Garmin Forerunner 935 to benefit from these updates as well. Whether its in the guise of a Forerunner 935 Plus or Forerunner 945 is anyone’s guess.

Like this article? Subscribe to our monthly newsletter and never miss out!