Garmin has had a rather busy month, having offered up countless new updates to members of its Enduro, Forerunner and Fenix smartwatches. However, the Instinct 2 (curr. $249 on Amazon) and its peers have been fresh out of luck. For some reason, Garmin has kept the Instinct 2, Instinct 2S, Instinct 2X and Instinct Crossover on the same update since the start of August, regardless of whether they are running beta or stable software.

That state of inertia has now changed now though, albeit only on Garmin's Beta Program. Specifically, the Instinct 2, Instinct 2S, Instinct 2X and Instinct Crossover are now eligible for Beta Version 17.00. Incidentally, this is the first update in Garmin's 17.xx development cycle. Nonetheless, it contains relatively few changes.

According to Garmin's forum post, Beta Version 17.00 focuses on two areas. On the one hand, the update is said to fix an issue that prevents the barometer from being manually calibrated. On the other hand, Beta Version 17.00 should resolve 'potential issues' with solar charging. Given that Beta Version 17.00 represents the start of a new beta development cycle, we would expect Garmin to introduce new features before finalising its next stable update.