several garmin watches have had this feature since May (I think) of this year, requiring a paired garmin compatible phone, actively running garmin app, to work; sends text to selected contact about “incident.” Doesn’t appear to contact emergency services.
The 2015 Garmin Edge Explore 1000 bike computer has this feature. By all accounts it was/is implemented poorly and triggers erroneously all the time. If they'd made it call the emergency services they'd have got in a lot of trouble.
Apple don't deserve any credit for the idea but deserve something for doing it well.
If there's one thing Apple does well is reinventing the "wheel". Every single one of their product seems to be an improved iteration over some predecessor, I don't have any Apple devices though, I might be wrong.
Poor wording I suppose. My garmin is prior to that one, and has fall detection by using my phone via Bluetooth. Not sure who had it first, but definitely before that 2019 Verizon model.
Kinda. The part that they're referring to is it being Garmin's first device with cellular capability. But it's definitely vague around fall monitoring too.
I'm referring to this sentence, which has nothing to do with cellular capability:
> Like the latest Apple Watch, which has a built-in fall detection system, the new Garmin watch also has a safety monitoring feature, which the company calls incident detection.