One weekend and several bugs as well as missing features with the Race - I am sad

David l

‘ Beyond its stylish design and training features, Suunto Race offers valuable support for everyday situations.

From monitoring activity tracks and heart rate 24/7, to
providing smart notifications and alarms, combine both
convenience and practicality.’

This is from the Suunto Race page - this is being marketed as a smartwatch, and whilst I do agree that the op is taking comments personally and being a tad rude, they are correct, imo, to have assumed that emojis would actually work as part of the smart notifications.

A watch to be worn all the time.

Egika

Wow, this emoji thing got quite emotional…

To add some background:
The earlier models of watches basically were limited in memory for characters. As some might remember, there even was a dedicated Chinese model as this one had the 汉子 in it.
Basically it has been a fight to add any new character for some time.
Now with the new generation of watches, like Vertical and Race, this limitation should be gone. Just the firmware has not yet received the emoji implementation. I personally hope, that soon there will be resources to do this after all the new training features have been rolled out and bugs have been ironed out.
I don’t like those black squares as well.
So let’s see.

sartoric

@Egika said in One weekend and several bugs as well as missing features with the Race - I am sad:

Wow, this emoji thing got quite emotional…

Well, it’s called emoji for a reason

that said I feel like this thread reached garbage time since a while

Jamie BG

@MiniForklift
He basically wants a garmin, but for it not to be called garmin, as all the “missing features” well Garmin has those.
So we can be 90% happy with a Race,
Or he can compromise on his principals and get a garmin which will provide him his 90% + missing 10%

Kramble

@Jamie-BG We all know that you are the Garmin’s man but don’t you think this one is too obvious ?

altcmd

@Kramble then Garmin can have OP and his rage

David l

@jjorgemoura said in One weekend and several bugs as well as missing features with the Race - I am sad:

@mikekoski490 Totally agree.
I want my Suunto watch to be a Sport watch, something that I can trust during an ultra race that can take up to 48 hours non stop (e.g. a mountain 100miler). By trust I mean: don’t crash, records everything correctly, battery don’t die unexpectedly or give incorrect values, battery that lasts the entire duration in one go or with just a short charge to top up, navigation + maps and that give me accurate values/metrics (pace, avg page, distance, elevation, etc). This needs to be 100% guaranteed and should be the core focus.

For everything else, I have a smartphone and/or a smartwatch.

I don’t want or need my Sport watch to do what I already have in my Smartwatch. I don’t want or need my Sport watch to play music, have payments (NFC), have my Parkrun barcode, make calls or display notifications. I wan’t and need a trustworthy sport watch to help me at 3am in the middle of nowhere. Note that all ultra races require (or should, for security reasons) that you run with a ~~smartwatch~~smartphone* and, depending on distance/duration, with a power bank.

Of course it would be awesome if the Sport watch support other sport related features, such as the HR, HRV, sleep tracking, nutrition alerts or race notes (as recently added as S+), etc. But I see this as a non-essential.

I often see some people buying a proper full featured, top of the line, Sport watch just to go to the gym or a 5/10 Km around the block or local park. It’s like having a 500HP SUV or 4x4 to do the school run in a city.

* I meant smartphone instead of smartwatch

Just thought I’d post as I now have to have a second watch to count steps for Vitality life insurance as it won’t read from Suunto even if it’s recorded into Apple health
Bought a cheap Garmin Vivoactive for £53 - will also compare HR

#offtopic Oh boy, just scrolled through this and need to take meds for anxiety…

Luís Pinto

First bug founded, up screen missing sports to choose, all black. Solution: turn off and turn on for now while we wait for an update.

Olaf Gottschalk

@Brad_Olwin if a watch is marketed and sold offering certain features, it should deliver.
Otherwise those features should simply not be implemented.

If you do not need notifications or step counting or HRV that’s completely fine, but you should not judge when others complain about a lack of professionalism when implementing the features and putting them on the spec sheet of a premium device.

If people here think I am rude - no. I am just very direct. And I don’t like to read “well, I don’t need this” when I complain for a good reason about a definite failure in programming on Suunto’s side… some really understood my complaint, thanks!

David l

@Olaf-Gottschalk I think you’ll find that there are few diehard Suunto users who believe that the sports watch it just that, regardless of what the advert says.

It is advertised as a smart watch and should therefore have at least the basic functionality of a smartwatch.

However, those functions, are not the top of the list of reasons that most people bought the watch for. But that’s not to say that you’re wrong.

The Race is actually a very good sports watch and the price, features and slimline fit make it better imo, that the Epix Pro I had previously.

TrailEyes

@David-l said in One weekend and several bugs as well as missing features with the Race - I am sad:

It is advertised as a smart watch and should therefore have at least the basic functionality of a smartwatch.

Is it advertised as a smart watch? I don’t recall seeing that, though I most certainly could be wrong. I’ve generally seen it referred to as a “sport watch” or “performance watch” in marketing/promo materials.

Having used Samsung watches in the past, for anything billed as a smart watch, I agree with your core point that the expectation of certain functionalities would be much higher than for a sport watch.

chee ee jordan lo

@Olaf-Gottschalk I can concur dc rainmaker did mention this.

Frank Stefan

@TrailEyes You are right, it´s not published as a “Smartwatch”. However there are some functions that are not great. For example the notifications with missing emoticons. If i were a programmer and have programmed this function and i see, how emoticons are replaced with squares, i personally would ask myselve “is this really ready to be made public ?”. I would say: “no”, because it´s running, but it´not good.
So sometimes it would be better not to implement some functions, because if they are not ok, you will earn a little shitstorm.
In the new firmware for the SV they obviously implemented more icons for apps that send notifications. So it seems it is possible. Why no emoticons ?

Please note: The emoticons are just an example what i have selected to explain.

babychai

@Frank-Stefan said in One weekend and several bugs as well as missing features with the Race - I am sad:

If i were a programmer and have programmed this function and i see, how emoticons are replaced with squares, i personally would ask myselve “is this really ready to be made public ?”. I would say: “no”, because it´s running, but it´not good.

you can’t mix programmer mindset with the businessman mindset. if you’re businessman i think you will think differently.
Suunto don’t need to wait their product to become perfect before sell it to the public. Suunto need to earn money to survive. they can sell it to the public first and then improve/add new feature later. some/many people will still buy it while waiting for the improvement coming, so why not sell first to make profit and improve cash flow?
while waiting for the improvement/new features we still able to enjoying our adventures with our Suunto sport watch.

Frank Stefan

@babychai Sure i understand your point. This “could” be a way to go for Suunto, but in this case it would be nice as a customer to have a roadmap, what Suunto has planned for the future of the firmware. I think this would stop a lot of discussions. The main point always (not only Suunto) for the customer is: Will it be implemented ? Will it be fixed ?
So as an result i think a lot of potential customers send the watches back because this lack of information.
If you purchase the watch and you know, they are aware of this problem or will implement this xyz function then maybe you will say: The watch is fine and worth the wait for the fix/upgrade.

tiago

@Frank-Stefan Polar did that with the first vantage V. And V3 seems the same,like another beta firmware at launch but this time without time frame for future updates. We should buy a watch for what is capable to deliver to customers at the launch,not for what is possible to have in a couple of months. When the products are launched in a rush, normally don’t work to well.

Olaf Gottschalk

@babychai my 5 cents to that as a professional programmer: if managers would care more about well educated programmers in their team, lots of things would not reach end users and it would not take longer.

Well trained devs are happy devs and can create bug free software in the same time as others create new bugs…

As Uncle Bob said: there are companies out there killed by bad software.

babychai

@Olaf-Gottschalk I’m not talking about bugs. i agree Suunto should not release it to the market IF they are aware those bugs and still advertise those features to the market. In my country i saw few Suunto ambassador are very hardworking do testing with the watch. i believe Suunto want to make sure their watch are bugs free before sell it to the public.

I’m talking about some features need improvement but maybe not very material. Those improvement Suunto can do it later according to their priority and sell it to the public first. E.g. emoji missing in notification.

Olaf Gottschalk

@babychai absolutely with you, features need priorities. Maybe the missing emojis makes me sad because I had the exact same issue 7 years ago with Polar’s first Vantage - they added the missing emojis after one year.

I would have never guessed this is still an issue anywhere… 🫣