But all my Bluetooth devices remain paired, so when I turn them on they just connect straight to the phone without it needing to be unlocked.

It does make me wonder about permission and remember settings, it should give you the option for the device to be more in charge

Heres a useful forum group for bolt users. Very active and Wahoo get involved too.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/wahoo-elemnt-users

But all my Bluetooth devices remain paired, so when I turn them on they just connect straight to the phone without it needing to be unlocked.

Yep. That is how ‘most’ devices work. For whatever reason, the Wahoo cycle computers don’t work like this.
They pair via the app; they will not pair with a phone just by turning them on somewhere close to the phone, unless the app is running.

This different operation is somewhat confirmed by going into the Bluetooth setting on the phone. You get a list of paired devices; mine has my headphones, speaker, 3 different cars & my Wife’s mobile. But no Elemnt Bolt.

You also get a different icon when the Bolt does connect to the phone via the app – rather than the normal bluetooth symbol changing slightly to show a connection, you get a new bluetooth symbol come up on the left-hand side of the notifications bar, where you get app info (like Spotify symbol, new e-mails, ebay info etc)…

Garmin 820 and an iPhone here.

Switch 820 on and it finds the phone and does everything without touching the phone.

Can need the app and the Bluetooth link reinstalling after an iOS or Garmin firmware update. Not every time, but sometimes.

Hmm, I’ll give the power management setting thing a go. It may be the Honor 9’s android skin that has had a couple of updates recently, possibly reset to default

My 810 doesn’t connect via Bluetooth no matter what app I use. And the navigation is hopeless. My previous post appears to have disappeared but even with the os maps installed the screen is far too small to be of any use.

It’s good for data mapping, but I’d not buy again as it appears much cheaper versions do everything the 810 can do, and the features that they don’t have are pointless anyway.

I’ve 2 main problems with my Bolt

The app can sometimes go funny and kill your phone battery even when it isn’t on (both Bolt and App) – something is going on in the background and phone can get very hot – others have had a similar problem.

Elevation data – it seems to be quite well known that the Bolt records lower overall ride ascent than other units – thing is, I don’t know which is the most accurate, but people with different phones, different Garmins etc all seem to record very similar total elevation whereas the Bolt often shows it a good few hundred feet lower over say a 2000ft Garmin/Phone result.

I reported that phone battery problem to Wahoo about 18 months ago; they didn’t seem especially interested in fixing it. Ultimately it’s been the main reason I’ve returned both a Bolt and an Elemnt.

Having said that, I’ve now got iOS 12 producing a similar effect for free 😀

Not paid enough attention to the elevation figure to know if it’s significantly out, but I have noticed that the live VAM figure is completely unusable.  Varies between 700 and 1600 on a steady climb.  I’ve also had two instances of the GPS signal completely dropping out when it’s had a completely clear view of the sky.

For a bit of balance, the LED indication during Strava live segments is nice.  On the other hand, what gets shown on the display is annoying.  During the segment it shows how many seconds up or down you are on your PB or the KoM, but after it finishes it only shows you your time, so unless you’ve memorised the time for the segment, you’ve no idea how well you did.

I think someone mentioned earlier about not being able to select your bike when auto-uploading rides to Strava. Is there no way of configuring different bikes in the settings to do this? And does Garmin do it? As someone with a few bikes, and who geeks out on the data, that kinda undoes most of the convenience of the auto-upload feature for me.

Elemnt has no notion of “profiles” and the upload really is completely automatic, so no, I don’t think there’s any way to do what you want.  No idea if the Garmin can do better.

The lack of “profiles” is another gripe with the Bolt – it has no sane way to hide the power fields when I’m on a bike with no power meter.  If you completely unpair your power meter then it offers to remove the power fields, but I don’t want to do that because then I have to re-pair it.  I just want it to hide the fields when the PM isn’t connected.   The best you can do is setup a custom data page, but then you have one more page to scroll through.

Not on Garmin, I just use the most used bike as default and change it when I upload, if I’m doing a week away on the non default bike I try and remember to swap it at the start of the week

Added it as a strava ticket ages ago to pick up Garmin Profile in the upload

My previous post appears to have disappeared but even with the os maps installed the screen is far too small to be of any use.

It’s fine on my Edge Touring, but not if I use OS maps.  The OS maps are bitmaps and don’t zoom properly, whereas the default Garmin maps are fine IMO.  I dunno if the 800 screen is worse but I doubt it.

(Garmin user here)

On said garmin, I can switch between different screens while riding just by swiping the screen; could the element do that and go to a screen without power? (my commute screen just shows the time and my battery level)

A bit like the rfid suggestion, I bet you could get IFTT (or that other ded complex one) to turn on the wahoo app when you go out of range of your home wifi or something like that

could the element do that and go to a screen without power?

Yeah, that’s what I meant by a custom data page, but bear in mind that on the Bolt you can only scroll one way through the pages, so it’s an extra page that you have to scroll through every time you want to flip pages.  I’m not sure if that’s better or worse than having half the screen filled with “n/a”.

IFTTT – interesting idea, will look into that.