Just a few weeks after the arrival of the Garmin Fenix 7, details of the long-awaited Forerunner 955 may have been published accidentally on the company's Australian website.
Much like the leak of the Garmin Venu 2 Plus, which appeared fleetingly on the company's support website in December 2021 before its official reveal in January, this appears to have been a case where a webpage under construction was made public by mistake.
There are no images this time around, which makes it tough to verify the leak, and as NotebookCheck observes, the page in question appears to have been removed before it could be cached by either Google or the Wayback Machine. However, Garmin fans on both the company's forums and Reddit have shared screengrabs that show the same page on different devices, so it may well be authentic.
Freedom from your phone
The screengrabs show a partially constructed page in Garmin's online store, with details of a Forerunner 955 LTE bundle priced at AU$1,049 (about $750 / £550).
The Forerunner 945 LTE edition was released in the US, but not Australia or the UK, so this is an interesting development. It means that you'll be able to work out completely untethered from your smartphone. If real, this new watch will allow you to make and receive calls, download apps through Garmin Connect, and stream music without being within Bluetooth range of your handset.
The fact that this is a bundle presumably means that, like the Forerunner 945, the new watch will be available to buy together with one or more chest strap heart rate monitors for more accurate heart rate measurements when running, swimming, and cycling.
The price looks plausible, albeit slightly lower than we would have expected. The non-LTE Forerunner 745 bundle (with HRM-Tri and HRM-Swim heart rate monitors) costs $749.99 / £629.99 / AU$1,199, so if correct, it's a huge upgrade for very little extra cash. Alternatively, it might mean that the new bundle contains only one heart rate monitor – possibly the Garmin HRM-Pro.
TechRadar contacted Garmin, but the company declined to comment.
Analysis: what we're expecting
After the launch of the Garmin Forerunner 55 last year, it's only a matter of time before the rest of the Forerunner series gets a refresh. The Australian leak was light on details, we can make some educated guesses about what the Forerunner 955 will have to offer when it lands.
First of all, we're not expecting an AMOLED display like that of the Venu 2 and Epix. The Forerunner line is well known for its impressive battery life, and sticking with a color memory-in-pixel (MIP) screen will keep power drain to a minimum.
In fact, we're hoping for an increase in battery life, particularly if the 955 is available with Garmin's Power Glass to keep the battery topped up. The Fenix 7 Solar is far more efficient at harvesting energy than its predecessor, so we're hoping Garmin will carry its improved solar cell over to the Forerunner 955 as well.
We're also expecting the Forerunenr 955 to inherit the graphic race time predictor and on-wrist stamina tracker from the Fenix 7. These are both extremely useful tools for runners aiming to push themselves that little bit harder. We're hoping that the seven-day training load graph will make an appearance as well.
It's tough to predict whether the Forerunner 955 will have a touchscreen, or stick with just physical buttons like the 945. The Fenix 7's touchscreen makes scrolling through menus a breeze though, and is particularly helpful for panning across maps, so it would be a very handy addition.
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