Garmin has accidentally leaked details of the forthcoming Forerunner 965 and Forerunner 265 watches on its own website. The leak gives us some more tantalizing details about the two devices, and suggests a launch may be imminent.
These new revelations follow weeks of speculation about the new devices, including titbits of information prematurely released by various third-party retailers. Earlier this week, golf store 5 Under Golf accidentally posted listing pages for both watches, including details of colorways and some fitness tracking features.
This latest leak, however, is the first to come from Garmin itself. As usual, the anonymous author of the5krunner and Flo of Fitness Tracker Test managed to snag screengrabs of the info before it was taken down.
Size, design, and features
The new info includes a comparison table that highlights the differences between the various watches in the Forerunner series. From it, we can ascertain that the Forerunner 965 (described as a running and triathlon GPS smartwatch) will definitely have an AMOLED display, plus a metal bezel, as shown in the low-res photos published by 5 Under Golf.
It's not clear whether this will be titanium or stainless steel. If the latter it's possible that it may be compatible with Garmin's new ECG app, but this isn't mentioned explicitly.
We can also see that, unlike the Forerunner 955, there will be no solar version of the Forerunner 965. This isn't too surprising considering the challenges of integrating photovoltaic material into an AMOLED screen. Garmin has registered patents for a technique that would allow it to put photovoltaic cells in between the sub-pixels of an AMOLED display, but this probably isn't ready to go into production yet.
There won't be a sapphire lens either, so we can expect all 965 models to come with Corning Gorilla Glass instead.
The Forerunner 965 will only come in one size, and its display will be slightly larger than that of the 955, increasing from 1.3in to 1.4in across. Fitness Tracker Test has turned these measurements into sketches to illustrate the difference, as you can see in the tweet below.
Because Garmin accidentally leaked pictures of the Forerunner 965 on its own website, I was able to better depict the ratio between the FR965 and FR955 a little better. Thanks to @the5krunner for pointing out. Still no CAD-precise drawing.#garmin #forerunner #leak pic.twitter.com/1PDKHqZdghFebruary 9, 2023
This isn't the first time details of an unreleased watch have been posted on one of Garmin's own sites. In December 2021, a press image of the Garmin Venu 2 Plus appeared on a support page before its launch in January 2022.
One thing we don't yet have is a release date, but it seems likely that the two new Forerunner watches will appear within the next few weeks.
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