Garmin fitness trackers now have Strava's safety system
When you're on a run or hike, use Beacon to update friends on your location in real-time.
A slew of Garmin fitness trackers today have access to Beacon, Strava's safety feature that allows users to send their location to friends in real-time while they're out on a run, hike or bike. Strava is a social networking app built for athletes, and it launched the Beacon service for premium members in August. With today's news, Strava premium members can share data between Beacon and Garmin LiveTrack on the following devices: Fenix 3, Edge Explore 820, Edge 520, 820 and 1000, and Forerunner 230, 235, 630 and 735XT.
Beacon allows users to send their real-time, on-map location to a handful of friends via text message, even if those friends don't have Strava or a premium membership. Strava already tracks users and sells the anonymized data to planning groups and governments interested in improving biking, walking and running in cities and towns. Users can opt-out of the tracking, of course.
One of the Garmin devices that now has direct access to Beacon is the Forerunner 235, which just so happens to be on Engadget's holiday gift guide this year.
