Spartan update complains

BKtoo

@Michał-Rudzki the spartan ultra is a very nice watch. It does not have the optical HR sensor, so the sleep tracking is not posible. But the watch is for real use, not for the gimmick Enjoy the the Spartan

bbx100

@BKtoo said in Spartan update complains:

n ultra is a very nice watch. It does not have the optical HR sensor, so the sleep tracking is not posible. But the watch is for real use, not for the gimmi

but spartan whr and baro line have OHR, so what with those users? I would also like to have phases of sleep.
Suunto should take care on spartan users as they are future buyer of newer watches. If they are not satisfied that is not good. Personally I bought spartan baro two moths ago as I had suunto core and was satisfied with it. I had option to buy garmin or the suunto, so as I had good experience with suunto I didn’t think too much. If I knew it more about spartan line I would probably decided different in favor of garmin ,

BKtoo

@bbx100 I understand you, but I think Suunto is one of the best to fix bug and provide support. Take a look at the Garmin forum and I think you understand me. From the Garmin forum:
-I think Garmin needs to be more open with the bug reports.
Over the years, I have worked with a number of software development products, most notably, the Google Earth Browser plugin GePlugin.
I was around when it was first released and immediately adopted it for myStarTraX app.
As with all new complex products, GePlugin contained many bugs, shortcomings, documentation errors etc that we as developers acknowledged and lived with because the basic product was fantastic and Google kept us well informed of their progress on the fixes.
They kept their developers on side by maintaining an informative interactive reporting web site in which every bug report was reviewed by their development team which updated the bug report with the following details:
date reported
tracking number
short title
comments from the developers and users
status indicating the result of their analysis: Bug Confirmed, Enhancement, Documentation error, Out of scope, etc
priority that they attached to the repair work
As updates were released, the status was updated with a description of the fix.

So, you can understand that I, and I’m sure many others of your developer community are underwhelmed by receiving comments from the Garmin team like:
“We have this crash addressed, and the fix will be available in an upcoming mobile SDK release. Thanks!”
“FYI, we’ve corrected this issue in the documentation. Thanks again for the report!”
“I’ve got it reported.”
“I’ve got a ticket created to investigate.”

Whilst no developer wants to see the shortcomings of their product splashed around to fuel the opposition and critics, all professional developers are aware that it’s impossible to release a bug-free, perfect product, and they judge a developer by their responsiveness to this inevitability.
Food for thought?

isazi

@bbx100 I understand bug fixing and supporting devices for long, and I hope Suunto will keep supporting the Spartan series also adding what was promised (I heard it was, I wasn’t here before). But I’m not sure about them adding new functionalities (like the recent Firstbeat metrics from the S series), if the series have been superseded by the S. All companies slowly phase out older lines, and Suunto is not different.

bbx100

@isazi said in Spartan update complains:

from the S series)

I have no complains on bugs on Spartan as I haven’t found yet (since I’m new user), but I would love that Suunto delivers what was promised (I heard about promises on this forum) and brings Spartan line to level of competitor Fenix 5 watch (e.g it has phases of sleep) or Ambit 3 in some functionalities as I also heard on this forum. I understand that new functionalities are for newer suunto watches, but at the time when I bought Spartan baro (this September) I looked at support and saw that there are regular updates so I bought watch. After one month after I bought watch than I hear that support stopped, I expect that since watch is still sold that there should be still support and some new features which are not premiuim…so that we older users are still satisfied and not neglected…

roma12_7

@bbx100 I hope suunto read this forum. I think it’s wise to write your remark on Suunto Facebook or Instagram page. It’s the best way to make suunto change the fact they stop update on spartan.

sartoric

@bbx100 said in Spartan update complains:

I would love that Suunto delivers what was promised (I heard about promises on this forum)

I’m not here to be Suunto’s advocate but …
This is the main misunderstanding as “officially” Suunto didn’t promise anything (afair) that is not already available with the last FW deployed to the Spartans.
What was promised are (I would say) all SA features.

eg. Suunto never promised structured workouts, in fact they clearly stated they won’t develop it.

I’m not saying I don’t want new features.
I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to have FW update in case of bug discovery (and I guess we will have)
I’m not saying I’m 100% happy

jsuarez

@sartoric said in Spartan update complains:

eg. Suunto never promised structured workouts, in fact they clearly stated they won’t develop it.

It never promised structured intervals, but it has never confirmed the opposite. There are only hints that to them structured intervals are not that important: (i) there is a thread in this forum that was upvoted by many users and was closed so as not to create expectatives, and (ii) there was a mention in the SuuntoPlus poll that structured intervals could not be created by that feature.

However, Suunto starting from the Spartans is probably the only sports watch company that does not have proper structured training on its watches. Even Ambits had that… So anyone would have expected that the series that superseeded Ambits should at least have similar featureset…

I myself cannot recommend Suunto anymore. About 18 months ago I sent a screenshot of one of my moves in Movescount with some analysis to my fellow runners’ WhatsApp group and they were impressed. I proudly told them this was a feature of Suunto. Today I wouldn’t even dare to send them an analysis in “that fake analysis in a 5”-screen tool" called Suunto App… Interesting how things change in so little time.

sartoric

@jsuarez said in Spartan update complains:

It never promised structured intervals, but it has never confirmed the opposite.

Well … this sounds to me as a mostly official “no”

MC is a completely different topic and it’s not closely related to the Spartans … imho

jsuarez

@sartoric It does sound like that, but technically speaking that is not an official statement by Suunto. If they have it so clear, why not release that statement in one of the periodic updates (by Suunto itself, not by Dimitrios)?

In any case, I had already accepted structured intervals would not make it to my watch. Hence, the change of watch, where structured intervals work wonderfully (powerful and easy to config both in-app and on the web).

Fenr1r

@jsuarez said in Spartan update complains:

It does sound like that, but technically speaking that is not an official statement by Suunto. If they have it so clear, why not release that statement in one of the periodic updates (by Suunto itself, not by Dimitrios)?

Because you do not use a negative in corporate communication (about your own products) unless it is absolutely unavoidable? Hence “Suunto 9” and “Suunto 9 Baro”. Not “Suunto 9 Baro-less” and “Suunto 9”.

If they did not specify a feature as enabled/intended in their official material (even if deprecated from an earlier product), relevant anticipation/disappointment is, alas, on us.

Hope doesn’t die easily so every FW update and app revision might seem like an extra slap in the face but it ain’t: it’s actually simple consistency by Suunto. I suspect the Ruptured Winterval Y/N issue is distant history for the hardware folk. DK is just unlucky to be holding the lightning-rod of SA.

Of course, the S-series could be a stalking horse, sales- and tech-wise, for the next generation. There will be shared FW until the one that gives the Tx ruptured wintervals … but not the Sx.

Sorry: that last bit was clearly ludicrous.

kriskus

@sartoric said in Spartan update complains:

eg. Suunto never promised structured workouts, in fact they clearly stated they won’t develop it.

Well, at least they said something about training plans which I somewhat can’t find anywhere in the watch or SA:
“We also need to delay the scheduled October 26th [2016] update (Sport mode customization, training plans to your watch and more) to later this year”

Egika

@kriskus said in Spartan update complains:

@sartoric said in Spartan update complains:

eg. Suunto never promised structured workouts, in fact they clearly stated they won’t develop it.

Well, at least they said something about training plans which I somewhat can’t find anywhere in the watch or SA:
“We also need to delay the scheduled October 26th [2016] update (Sport mode customization, training plans to your watch and more) to later this year”

This traning plan feature is available in Movescount and the watch since quite some time.

https://www.suunto.com/en-us/sports/News-Articles-container-page/tutorial-tuesday/how-to-plan-your-workouts-with-the-new-weekly-planner/

Still this plan has nothing to do with the mentioned structured workouts…

kriskus

OK, I was thinking about whether this was it or not. On the other hand, it’s gone now after the update to SA, isn’t it?

Egika

@kriskus for now - yes. For the future - nobody knows

Michał Rudzki

@jsuarez I think it’s not about if it has been promised or not. If you see that old line has that structured workouts and when the new line is released you would suspect that will have that same as old one some new features. Also, I need to maintain that Suunto Spartan was a premium watch, many people that bought that watch at that time were suppressed that feature is missing. If you are paying for the premium watch you are expecting more/less the same functionalities as a competitor at the same time. Many users of Spartan’s voting on that feature from the beginning because they believe in ‘we are listing our community’… Frustrating is very big in Spartans users, many probably will go into Polar/Garmin solution, and they will start losing clients, that’s my opinion.

jsuarez

That’s also my view, @Michał-Rudzki, and those were my logical expectations when I bough the watch.

I upvoted both structured training and web frontend threads and since Suunto has not acted for over 2 years towards fulfilling any of those two items I just realised that I had no option other than moving on and change brand. Two years is more than reasonable time to at least give a proper roadmap and featureset to your customers. To me this shows Suunto’s management is inconsistent and I do not see a bright future for the company.

Fenr1r

@jsuarez (& @Michał-Rudzki) Switching brands makes complete sense when a brand appears to be no longer catering to your Special Interest. In sufficient volume, such actions probably make more impact on a company than forum posts alone. The problem for those wishing the return of their SI is getting the company to link lower sales with a specific deprecated feature.

However, as a Spartan-feature-expansion-hoper myself, relying on those “logical expectations” might lead you into more grief down the road. The “logic” and expectations derived therefrom are based on A) unrealistic (i.e., demonstrably incorrect) assumptions and B) solipsism.

A) New models (no matter how premium) and software revisions do not necessarily keep all the features of the old. Stuff gets deprecated: I am sure you can think of many non-Suunto examples easily. Equally, brands often maintain distinction (especially if they hover at different price points) by focussing on different feature sets. Somewhere Suunto probably has a list of software features and the time/labor cost/benefit of the programming involved: their logic (no matter that we cannot see it) is paramount in product development, not our expectations.

B) That deprecated stuff might be your (or my) favorite stuff.

BobMiles

Garmin just released the next big update for the FR945, where they bring community requested features and bugfixes. Just after a month since the last release. Coming from suunto, that feels almost impossible.
It’s hard to see that there still is nothing new for the Spartans…

isazi

@BobMiles comparing the 945 to the Spartans is not fair, 945 is the current Forerunner flagship, Spartans are not Suunto flagship anymore. Better example would be the 935 that also just got an update itself, all bugfixes, but still it got something.