Garmin has launched Face-It, a watch face creation app for its range of Connect IQ compatible devices.
Face-It is available on the App Store and Google Play, and enables users to select photos from their smartphone and turn them into watch faces.
Essential reading: Best Garmin Connect IQ apps
The Face-It app can create custom watch faces for the following Connect IQ compatible wearables: Fenix 3, Vivoactive and Vivoactive HR, Forerunner 230, 235, 630, 735XT and 920XT. There's also support for D2, Bravo, Epix, Quatix and Tactix.
How to install a Face-It watch face
So how do you install one of these watch faces?
It's pretty easy, just install the app and fire it up on your phone. You'll then be asked to choose a picture from your phone's library. You can then choose whether you want the face to be analogue or digital, but those are the only options.
When you've designed the watch face hit Send to device. All that will happen is that Garmin Connect will fire up and you need to sync the your device as normal. You can also connect up your device via USB to a PC and sync via Garmin Express.
And as we expected, the results are...not the best, as you can see from the above pictures of our Fenix 3. Garmin universally opts for low res screens to keep battery life to a minimum. That means that you'll need to choose your image carefully, and not put your expectations too high. However, it's a bit of free fun and well worth trying out.
More seriously, it's evidence that Garmin is starting to take Connect IQ seriously. The store has boosted quality over the last year, and perhaps the Face-It app shows that better quality screens – perhaps aping the Polar M600 which doubles as a smartwatch – are on the way.
You'll need to watch this space during IFA 2016 to see if any new Garmins hit the show floor.
How we test
James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.