With the release of software version 1.141.858.3, your Karoo now has a fresh new look. But while the new user interface looks great, we’ve designed it with usability in mind, and with the intent of improving your in-ride experience.
This involves getting you out on the bike faster, with seamless profile selection, easy ways to add routes or change your preferences without diving through menu screens, and a quick start process.
It’s also about making your data more visible at a glance, showing you the right data at the right time, and making the entire experience consistent across the device. With more data screen options and seamless contextual operation, you can see more of what matters to you while keeping your focus on your ride.
Finally, we know the cycling experience doesn’t stop when you finish your ride. We’ve redesigned the post-ride screen and historic activities screens, making analysis and sharing to third party services easier than ever before.
Get to what matters most, faster
Your Karoo has a new-look homescreen, intended to make hitting the road easier and simpler. Swipe to the profile you want to ride and tap it, then tap the start icon. That’s it.
We’ve stripped down the various settings, menus, and confirmations to get you out on your ride faster - just two taps or button clicks is now all it takes. You can add Routes and Workouts from their respective data pages, or from the Routes/Workouts buttons on the homescreen.
And, it’s a minor footnote in a huge software release, but we updated the animation for turning on the device. This shortens the boot-up time by four seconds. It all adds up!
Learn more:
Status Bar
Focus on What Matters
We want your Karoo to be a seamless copilot on your ride, rather than something you have to spend time looking at or interacting with when you want your focus on the road. This includes updating the status bar, which now informs you which of your sensors are connected so you can identify any issues before beginning your ride, and which now also includes battery level, ride time, and a pause indicator.
Your pages have also been refreshed for in-ride clarity and ease of use. We’ve added additional data page templates, including nine and ten field options, and you can now add multiple graphical data fields on a single page (e.g. use our heart rate zone and power zone fields at the same time). You can also add graphical data fields to the map page, so you can see both map and upcoming elevation at the same time (and many other options too).
Along with new templates, data field appearance itself has been optimized to give Karoo users clearly visible data at a glance. We’ve made data field labels more readable, while also saving more space for data, and right-justification allows the data to populate predictably, maximizing the use of Karoo’s screen. Font size management has also been improved to avoid side-by-side data fields having numbers running too close together.
As we mentioned earlier, you can now add or edit a route or workout from their respective pages. This is all in service of streamlining the experience from device launch to ride, and puts these options where you need them the most. There’s a lot more too, like a slider to end your rides so you don’t accidentally stop recording, more legible elevation profile graphics, and improved navigation.
Learn more:
Data Field Status | Ride with Karoo | Editing an Ongoing Ride | Workouts | Offline Map Sections | Recording a Lap During a Ride
New Inputs
Every element of the Karoo’s operation can now be done with either the hardware buttons or the touchscreen, which is another step in our overall effort to streamline the experience from device launch to ride.
You can now tap the start icon or use the upper-right button to start, pause, or resume a ride. These icons are persistent, contextual, and mapped to the hardware buttons, so that it’s as easy as possible to interact with the device without losing focus on the road. All hardware functions are now tappable, and the contextual icons let you know exactly what each button does in any scenario (e.g. zooming the map).
Learn more:
Key Button Icons
Post-Ride
The ride summary screen is now redesigned to make it easier to view your ride data, updating titles and descriptions, and upload to your favorite third party services. And if you want to revisit historic rides, the activity list has received a design refresh lets you clearly review recent rides and relevant data in a way that is visually consistent with the rest of the Karoo.
Learn more:
Saving a Ride | Deleting a Ride | Activity Summary Sceen | Upload to Third-Party Services
Map data update
Finally, your Karoo has received a periodic map data update. Installing this update is entirely option, but highly recommended. As well as improving the overall experience, this update adds new regions that we previously unsupported: Turks and Caicos Islands, Cayman Islands, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador Guyana, French Guiana, and Falkland Islands are now available.
Learn more:
Map in 3D View
It’s a huge release, and we haven’t covered it all in this blog. For more information on the new features and changes that just dropped, head to our Release Notes, and read our Design Update blog post to see what else is coming. Make sure to also check our Knowledge Base for help with new features.