Let me help on some decisions .
Previously Vo2max was calculated via FirstBeat license. Thats no longer the case already with Race. Its Suunto own algo.
As you already know Race has some new features such as Race estimations and sleep stages. Those come from some licenses with other providers.
Suunto atm is at the stage that is developing / evaluating all in house (or at least wants to).
So, its a matter of internal (and external fieldtesting, public surveys) evaluation. So to give an example:
Suunto has developed Running marathon estimations. They work well. They benchmark those against FB , GoMore and other providers. If the result is good they will flip the switch to their own. Thats a no brainer. But when they want to release a model with those features, ie the Race , on launch they can go with whatever provider works better and pay the price to them (per unit usually).
You as users / consumers should keep in mind that Suunto is trying to provide a good solution to increase the consumer satisfaction based on factors such as launch timing, license expiration etc.
To be specific on the following update for the Vertical for example, the resources will be own algo. Same most probably is for running stats estimations (marathon time etc). That means that Suunto will have 2 different algos out there (2 watches with different algos ) and at some point 1 of the 2 algos will align to the best result.
To be honest the running time estimations (marathon etc) work better for me on the tests with SV with the Suunto in house algos than to what Race is using. That doesn’t mean it works better for all.
Bottomline, things will get aligned , but needs time.
