Future of the Spartan Line

Hannu Liljemark

the biggest mistake is putting all that to 3rd party application, you are paying for watch 650 euro + subscription, for example, Strava/Runalyze/TP to get more you have in SuuntoApp you need have a subscription with you need pay 10 euro/month really !!! there is no discount while you are using suuntoApp. So, if you would like to do some analysis of your data you need to pay and pay a lot

Should Suunto provide better analytics for all sports the watch supports, only for running or biggest tracked sports based on user stats? Today I realized how good Stryd’s analytics are, at least for a hobbyist like myself. But Stryd only supports running so I guess it’s their core business to give metrics and intelligence to the users.

I agree some deal to get discount from 3rd party monthly service would be really nice.

theorydude

@isazi “I don’t think there has been any official message from Suunto saying Spartans are not supported anymore.” - that’s because Suunto refuses to communicate anything to its customers. Spartan’s are dead. Suunto is all about the 7 line:
smartapps to compete with iWatch, and trying to get the SA connected with as many paying services as possible.

Can’t say I blame them, as they have to follow the profitability. I just wish that they would be transparent about what they are doing, and give people a roadmap. The core problem/challenge is this: Suunto is about 300+employees - no idea on their sale, as they are private. Garmin is over 10K employees and over $3 billion in sales.

Suunto developed multiple lines and watches to try and compete, but they simply don’t have the manpower to keep them supported. Unfortunately, we are getting stonewalled in the process, as they are afraid of losing customers wholesale.

Egika

@theorydude Spartans are not dead. The are great gadgets working as they’re specified.
I had a Spartan Ultra and have a Spartan Trainer.
All good with them and nothing dead about it.

Michał Rudzki

@theorydude look on the firmware on Spartan’s did you seen there some updates?! I don’t think so, support also won’t tell anything about updates. No updates mean the Spartan line is dead. X line had a couple of updates in the meantime.

Egika

@Michał-Rudzki ok, if this is your definition of “dead” - then you are right.
That also means a Rolex when you buy is for a couple of thousand dollars is dead right away…?!

My definition is: The gadget has a spec. I buy it according to this spec. Then it does its job until it is dead (broken). This should not happen too soon - and my Spartan Trainer is still going strong. As well as my S6 and T6. All of them are only dead if I don’t replace the battery.

Why on earth would you regard a watch as “alive” only as long as there are new features coiming in? Get one and use it

Michał Rudzki

@theorydude I am not expecting to get thousands of new feature, I am only expecting to get bugs that are in the watch firmware nothing more… any try of contacting with support ends on quote “we are working internally and we can’t say when it happens” besides mixing Rolex watch with Smartwatch isn’t on the place.

Egika

@Michał-Rudzki in your post in this thread (Dec 29) you ask for a lot of additional features (which is legit and most of them others would like to see as well) - now you are talking about bugs.
What substantial bugs are there left in the Spartans that don’t allow to use it according to the specs?

Michał Rudzki

@Egika what features I am only expecting improving what is already in the watch and fixing some noting bugs and behavior that has been thousands of thousands of times commented by the community. I agree with the fact that Spartan will not get any new features because of X line. Regarding your note, on Dec 29 not all was known regarding Spartan Line and it’s not a necessity to catch me for a ‘word’ what I would like to have in an unsupported watch that is still sold in Amazon even in Suunto Shop. For most communities, it’s obvious if you are selling something you should support it.

Egika

@Michał-Rudzki ok, now we better stop argueing, because this goes in circles.

My Spartan Trainer had an issue last year and was replaced within days.
This is what I call support. And it works nicely with all watches Suunto is selling as of today - including Ambit3

Otherwise the watches are what they are. And if your definition of support is an ongoing change in firmware, yes, then there is no support for older models like Spartans (while there has been a fix around new year, when the date issue came up. That’s support - isn’t it?)

zhang965

@Michał-Rudzki said in Future of the Spartan Line:

@Egika what features I am only expecting improving what is already in the watch and fixing some noting bugs and behavior that has been thousands of thousands of times commented by the community. I agree with the fact that Spartan will not get any new features because of X line. Regarding your note, on Dec 29 not all was known regarding Spartan Line and it’s not a necessity to catch me for a ‘word’ what I would like to have in an unsupported watch that is still sold in Amazon even in Suunto Shop. For most communities, it’s obvious if you are selling something you should support it.

I totally agree with you, BUT

It’s time to move on.

Suunto has their own problem, not only for supporting one line of watch.

I was an user both of Spartan ultra ans S9B for long time. I know, they did provide any improvement for Spartan Ultra since long time, so what? S9B has no improvement either…

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

@zhang965 no it doesn’t have any imporvements. No we didn’t add the vo2 that you asked, no we are not developing the software, no it didn’t don’t get suunto plus.

W t f dude ?

Oh wait. It’s monday. The time when people have to go and s***

Mi_chael

SuuntoPlus is a good thing. The survey is full of nice feature but the wait is long…

zhang965

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos said in Future of the Spartan Line:

@zhang965 no it doesn’t have any imporvements. No we didn’t add the vo2 that you asked, no we are not developing the software, no it didn’t don’t get suunto plus.

W t f dude ?

Oh wait. It’s monday. The time when people have to go and s***

Yes, of course, but we(you and me) didn’t mention the same time stamp.

Your time stamp is just a little bit earlier than my mention.

What I wanted to share with Michel, was Spartan has been released almost since 5 years.

It’s the time to move on.

If a gps watch’s support cycle is about 2 -3 years, S9B is getting over as well.

If you want a Rolex then buy a Rolex.

You cannot ask a 600dollers watch to become a real Rolex right?

Egika

@zhang965 said in Future of the Spartan Line:

You cannot ask a 600dollers watch to become a real Rolex right?

Definitely time for a Rolex watch face

lexterm77

@Egika

Egika

@lexterm77
Suunto looks better

lexterm77

@Egika said in Future of the Spartan Line:

@lexterm77
Suunto looks better

Yes, looks slicker, plus something is wrong with bt on my sub, it won’t sync

theorydude

I appreciate all the replies - some valid points made. It’s a valid argument to consider whether a watch/line is too old, and time to move on. That’s why I dropped my Ambit 2 and got the Spartan. What frustrated me - and continues to frustrate me - is that they dropped a major swim feature - kick/drill. I (stupidly) didn’t confirm that something so fundamental would be dropped, and didn’t confirm it was there in the Spartan. For people who swim competitively, not being able to track kicking and drills is huge -it can be 1/3 to 1/2 of a given workout, depending. If you’re a runner, it’s like not being able to measure cadence, I guess. Triathletes don’t miss it, really, because when they train swimming, they mostly lap swim and often avoid kick stuff to “save their legs” (I know a lot of triathletes). What Suunto does, it does well, and has great hardware - I just don’t get dropping such a fundamental feature.

peringmar

Earlier today I made a post that got closed because of this one duplicate so I guess I will have to answer here.

In my post I went into some detail of my take on this. It is long so the short summery is that I believe that the consumer, environment and Suunto as a company could benefit of long-time watch support and that if Suunto could not provide the update for free because of development costs, that they should sell it for a fair price.

Link to my post: https://forum.suunto.com/topic/6791/update-the-spartan-series-software

@saketo-nemo while it could be hardware related I doubt it. Resources and fitness-level are two additional screens in the menu. Snap to route is literally the reverse of the already present “remaining distance to end of route” plus a threshold when off route and the turn to turn is not really supported on the spartan, when activated it is only a bunch of annoying waypoints that do not tell anything.

@jsuarez I totally agree with you that the spartan seems EOL. Which I think is absurd because of the spartan still being a totally capable device. Obviously, the watch is not as “snappy” as the S9 when navigating menus, but totally justifiable for its age. For extra features I would even tolerate less “snappiness”. Some things on the old Suunto OS were neat, like the bar chart of activities.

DMytro

@peringmar I’m not so sure about it. Picture a subset of suunto users who don’t want to upgrade yet, then a subset of those who are willing to pay extra for the new update, never mind that Spartan is a line and not a single watch, so fw should be fine tuned for each and every watch. Tbh I think it’s a rather small number, so it’s probably still not economically viable.
As alternative I might suggest you buy a new watch if features are a deal-breaker for you and, either give your watch to suunto so that they can recycle it, or resell your watch, so other can use it, or just have two watches: Spartan for regular stuff and new watch for training where new features are crucial.
Extra features for additional price would be interesting to see though and I agree that is better to keep the old watch.