How are so many basic features missing? Are these on the roadmap?

[aiv4r]

@raven i do not think we disagree on the point, we disagree on philosphy of using a sportswatch
But I also think that for example if I would do multi-day activity I would just start a new activity everyday, while if I have a pause for an hour to eat or enjoy the view with a beer/coffee I would leave it on pause.

[raven]

@VoiGAS said:

@raven as I am a Suunto user and my wife uses Garmin I have a usecase: When we are hiking and go to a hut for a break she uses this feature while I hit Pause. The difference is that she has a normal watch during the break while I have a blinking Pause Screen. Also if I touch the buttons by accident the pause ends.
Not a big deal, but a nice comfort feature

Right, but in a world where the proposal I offer, “view as one session,” existed, then you’d simply stop the first session, have the watch as normal, then start a second session. You’d then have the option to view as two sessions or combine to a view that would match what your wife has. Meanwhile, she wouldn’t be able to separate out her paused session if she wanted.

And my proposed feature would be in the Suunto app, so if this happened would benefit all Suunto users regardless of watch model, where a more complex pause/hold feature would require firmware updates for every Suunto model for the feature to exist. Which more likely means “on future watches, not the current ones.”

[raven]

@pbanon said:

@raven said:
Wow, that’s not how I do sessions. If I completely stop and let my HR come to a rest from sitting down, then that clearly means I’ve stopped the activity. Your social bike ride is two sessions in my mind and not a single session.

I think this is the root of the difference for how we approach activities. For me an activity is not based on my HR, I track based on the trip I’m doing. A multiday traverse or overnight backpack is a single activity, a social bike ride with long stop in the middle is one activity, but a hike on two different days as in your example is two separate activities. It’s just a different approach based on what we want to get out of the watch and neither is wrong.

Except that with my proposal, everyone has the option to do things “both ways,” so I can record sessions before and after lunch and see them as either two events or a single event. Your proposal means we only get one event unless there’s a reverse idea from what I propose, to “split” a session into multiple views, which seems more complex. And as I note earlier, I’d be concerned an extended paused event in abeyance would be prone to data loss, especially if doing other things on the watch. Asking for a week long “single event session” to be continually alternating between running then paused seems like asking for trouble.

[raven]

Here’s an example situation I’m curious how others would handle: you’re on a multiple day bike trip, and for the evening at a hotel to sleep. You want to use the pool to do some lap swimming, why not? But you already have the ongoing biking event.

Does the “extended pause/hold” system allow a different session to run in between the pause/hold, so that here you could run a separate swim session?

With my “view two as one” idea, we’d already have ended the day’s bike ride, so simple to start a swim session, then the next day start a new bike ride. Then later in the Suunto app, take both bike days and combine to one view. How would “extended pause/hold” deal with this idea?

[freeheeler]

I think you can all calm down. these ideas have been there for many years and obviously they did not make it to the watch since… chances aren’t zero, but when we observe releases we can imagine that they will not come too soon

[raven]

@freeheeler said:

I think you can all calm down. these ideas have been there for many years and obviously they did not make it to the watch since… chances aren’t zero, but when we observe releases we can imagine that they will not come too soon

It also seems the extended pause does exist on Garmin, so those who find that a mission critical feature can vote with their money. The proposal I offered as an alternative (although both ideas could exist simultaneously, which is why I was curious if my idea would be sufficient for others or if they would demand extended pause anyway, and if so, why) I think would be a novel feature no current sports watch does to the best of my knowledge.

I concur it’s likely neither feature request will happen, at least not any time soon.

[maszop]

@pbanon The previously mentioned option of displaying several activities as a single one in the SuuntoApp would be a much better solution than some dodgy workaround on the watch itself – even more bugs.

I already suggested that solution earlier in similar threads, instead of that idiotic ‘Resume Later’.

[brechtvb]

The best solution for this is for Suunto to start fixing things.

I have suggested this before but we should have an issue tracker for better tracking and denser conversations.

Including a list of sports Bluetooth sensors that work and don’t, it would prevent a lot of surprises.

[pbanon]

@raven said:
Except that with my proposal, everyone has the option to do things “both ways,” so I can record sessions before and after lunch and see them as either two events or a single event. Your proposal means we only get one event unless there’s a reverse idea from what I propose, to “split” a session into multiple views, which seems more complex. And as I note earlier, I’d be concerned an extended paused event in abeyance would be prone to data loss, especially if doing other things on the watch. Asking for a week long “single event session” to be continually alternating between running then paused seems like asking for trouble.

Adding resume later feature also let’s everyone do it both ways. If you don’t want to pause and resume later, then you can choose not to and start a new activity the way you do today.
My activities auto sync to Strava and Strava does not allowing combining activities. It is possible to combine tracks using 3rd party tools but they are tedious and don’t always work. Plus when you upload the combined activity to Strava, most other native watch data is lost.
If pausing an activity works, then it shouldn’t matter how long it’s paused. This has always worked flawlessly on my Garmin.

[Steven Hambleton]

Instead of pausing an activity, allow someone to go to their exercise log, then choose to extend an existing saved session.

Not sure how this would affect stats recording or mapping but it means you can use your watch as a watch and it also means you can choose to start a different sport between sessions.

[raven]

@pbanon said:

@raven said:
Except that with my proposal, everyone has the option to do things “both ways,” so I can record sessions before and after lunch and see them as either two events or a single event. Your proposal means we only get one event unless there’s a reverse idea from what I propose, to “split” a session into multiple views, which seems more complex. And as I note earlier, I’d be concerned an extended paused event in abeyance would be prone to data loss, especially if doing other things on the watch. Asking for a week long “single event session” to be continually alternating between running then paused seems like asking for trouble.

Adding resume later feature also let’s everyone do it both ways. If you don’t want to pause and resume later, then you can choose not to and start a new activity the way you do today.

But I want to see the Trail Running session I did one day and the Hiking session I did on another day both as separate sessions (for individual performance metrics) and as a combined session (to see the overall map of my vacation adventures). Resume later would force me to keep the session in abeyance for an entire day, and would force me to choose one of the two modalities but not the other although would give me the single map.

And again, my proposed “view two as one” idea would be an app update ability that gives the feature to all Suunto users, while changing how recording works on the watch requires a firmware update for each individual watch, and this presumes the feature was within the hardware and OS capabilities of the watch. Otherwise it is only for new watches designed with that feature in mind.

[elbee]

@raven said:

@elbee said:

@raven

Ah. You want to ridicule other people’s opinions ….

No, that was not my intent, and I don’t recall commenting on an “opinion.” I stated how I use devices and what I expect from them.

In the case of someone wanting to have a social ride with a lunch break, what I think would make sense is to record this as two sessions as I would do. However, then in the Sunnto app, have a feature to “view as one session” where one can combine multiple sessions.

People push their activities via suunto to other platforms, like strava, intervals.icu or komoot. Your solution would mean you have to combine multiple legs of 1 activity on several platforms.

But we’re not going to solve this. Everybody (me including) only want the features they have use for. And like I said, pause to resume later isn’t a must have feature. I had it on my previous watch and had use for it, so it’s more a nice to have.

[raven]

@elbee what’s the limit of “extended pause” on Garmin? As I asked earlier, can one do a separate activity “in between” the legs? Is it possible to extend an activity a week, a month, a year?

A problem I have with the proposal is from a testing point of view, what’s the limits it would be tested against? This is partly why I asked how people define a “session”. For me, if I run a 10km on Monday, then another 10km on Tuesday, a third 10km on Wednesday, a fourth 10km on Thursday, then a 5km on Friday, that’s always going to be five sessions. While it’s true that’s a cumulative 45km and one might consider it “equivalent” to a marathon, it’s also true I didn’t run a marathon in this example.

It’s like if someone asked me “how’s the battery life on your Suunto Race S” and I answered “great, I’ve been running it a year now.” Then they’d clarify “wait, no charging for a year?” And I’d go “oh no, I charge it every 4-5 days, but my idea of battery life is how long I can keep it going without it totally running out of power, so plugging it in is fine.” People would find this definition silly, I suspect.

Likewise, the most generous interpretation of “session” I’d consider would be “activity done between sleep events,” with sleeping being the effective “plug in to recharge” for a human. Saying you want a “pause and continue” that can go potentially infinite over hundreds of days and watch charge cycles seems both problematic and ultimately prevarication.

As for “view as one” and other systems, my thought was when in this “view as one session mode” one could simply export the FIT file and it would do it as if it were a single session. Then import that to your other places.

[maszop]

@raven You could also ask: would over six months on the Appalachian Trail count as a single activity? By that logic, yes. But to me, that doesn’t really make sense.

[elbee]

@raven

I described it earlier but happy to be as clear as I can.

On a garmin, you start an activity (by pressing the upper right button and selecting an activity). When you press pause, you get the option, save, continue, delete and resume later.

When you select resume later, the watch returns to normal (not sport) watch mode.

The moment you start an activity again (by pressing the top right button) the you are presented with the paused activity. You can choose continue, or discard the paused. You cannot start an other.

I haven’t tested if I can extend 1 activity for months, why should I? But if you want to do it it’s probably not a problem.

And if you want to brag about running a marathon that you actually run in intervals during several days… that says more about the person that about a watch function that has some good use being misused.

You focus to much what a session is. It’s basically what you think it is and that might be different for other people.

There might be use for your suggested “combine multiple activities to 1” in the app. Like the time I did a long trail run, my watch crashed, but did saved the activity so far. I started a new one and ended up with 2 separate activities on strava. Bit of a bummer.

But for normal things where there is a logical pause (like social rides) you just want the automatic flow, syncing you watch and seconds later it’s on strava. Easy as that, and no fuss with editing and combining 2 things.

[maszop]

@elbee You could combine such activities in the SuuntoApp – if there was an option to group them – and export one merged gpx to Strava. Why complicate the already underdeveloped watch software even more?

It’s a bit strange to distance yourself from sessions, results, and analyses, while at the same time caring so much about exporting to Strava

[2b2bff]

@elbee said:

When you select resume later, the watch returns to normal (not sport) watch mode.

However, there are several limitations to it. One of them is that Body Battery / stress is not recorded anymore. (can’t find the source for this right now)

[elbee]

@maszop said:

@elbee You could combine such activities in the SuuntoApp – if there was an option to group them – and export one merged gpx to Strava. Why complicate the already underdeveloped watch software even more?

It’s a bit strange to distance yourself from sessions, results, and analyses, while at the same time caring so much about exporting to Strava

Oh, I recognize the benefit of putting features in the app. That means all watches get it, even the older ones.
I also realize Suunto developers are constrained. Like I said before, for me it’s not a must have function. I have used to a couple of times on my previous garmin. But here we are discussing the usefulness of a function. Discussing the priority is something else.

But compare what the user has to do.

Start an activity.
Pause to resume later and activity
Resume the activity
Stop and save the activity,
From there, everything is automatically pushed to whatever you configured.

As with the other join in the app option:
Start and activity.
Stop and activity.
(The activity is pushed to whatever is configured)
Start a new activity.
Stop the activity.
(The activity is pushed to whatever is configured)
Go to the suunto app.
Combine the 2 activities.
Download the new fit file
Go yo strava.
Delete the 2 activities you want to be joined.
Upload the new fit file.
Repeat for other platforms.

Is that really how you see it?

(And I don’t distance me from session. On the contrary, I don’t define what a session is for other people. Do what every feels right for you)

[raven]

@elbee said:

@raven

I described it earlier but happy to be as clear as I can.

On a garmin, you start an activity (by pressing the upper right button and selecting an activity). When you press pause, you get the option, save, continue, delete and resume later.

When you select resume later, the watch returns to normal (not sport) watch mode.

The moment you start an activity again (by pressing the top right button) the you are presented with the paused activity. You can choose continue, or discard the paused. You cannot start an other.

I haven’t tested if I can extend 1 activity for months, why should I? But if you want to do it it’s probably not a problem.

And if you want to brag about running a marathon that you actually run in intervals during several days… that says more about the person that about a watch function that has some good use being misused.

You focus to much what a session is. It’s basically what you think it is and that might be different for other people.

There might be use for your suggested “combine multiple activities to 1” in the app. Like the time I did a long trail run, my watch crashed, but did saved the activity so far. I started a new one and ended up with 2 separate activities on strava. Bit of a bummer.

But for normal things where there is a logical pause (like social rides) you just want the automatic flow, syncing you watch and seconds later it’s on strava. Easy as that, and no fuss with editing and combining 2 things.

Thanks for explaining how the Garmin works. I must have missed it earlier.

The reason I “focus on what a session is,” is that my background is in QA testing, and writing test requirements and documentation is a hat I wear. If I were working for Suunto and taking your request seriously, then I’d want to design a test suite to ensure that the feature met specifications. If we cannot agree on what the spec is, then it either won’t be developed properly or worse, not tested properly. The latter could result in people losing data if they trust in a pause system that doesn’t do what they expect. If, for example, pausing a session, then taking the watch off and putting it on a charger wiped the activity for some reason that would not be ideal.

Do we agree a “session” (actually, Suunto would call this an “activity” I think based on the picture I showed earlier) is typically “time from press start to time to press end” and not something else like the yearly summary I showed earlier? Someone who looked at my earlier picture and said “that’s 11 items” i.e. all cycling is “one item” all running is “second item” isn’t speaking the same language I am.

If we agree on what a “session/activity” normally is, then can we also agree that we can divide that into “laps” or segments? That is, when I run, Suunto assigns “auto-laps” every kilometer, I have a custom setting to make an auto-lap every four minutes, and if I press the lap button I’ll get another segment? Or if doing a structured workout that has a number of segments, each of those segments is within a single activity/session? This is what intervals.icu excels at, being able to take an activity/session and one can assign arbitrary intervals/segments within it.

So with activity/session as a starting point, and interval/segments/lap as a way of describing a portion of the activity, then I’m proposing going the other way, combining activity/sessions to a new view. The screenshot I shows earlier is actually one form of this, an aggregate view of the total activity/sessions for each modality within a specified timespan, in this case it was for this calendar year of 2026.

What I’d like is to extend this idea, and make it more customizable. If I go on vacation to another country for a week, then I still want to record my normal sessions like I do at home, but I’d also like the ability to select all of them, and perhaps say “show me an overall map with all these tracks marked,” not to present it as a fictional single activity I did, but as an overall “exploration map” of my vacation. I think this is a worthy idea regardless of your extended pause exists or not.

My overall question or thought experiment was “would this sort of idea also mollify the need for extended pause,” and it seems the answer is “no,” but it’s more out of a recalcitrant rejection of anything that is not simply “make it like a Garmin,” which is a shame as Garmin already exists and I’d prefer to explore ideas that Garmin wasn’t doing, as one can buy a Garmin now if one desires.

[elbee]

@raven

I’m a software developer so I understand your need for requirements.

There is a requirement to never loose data. That is already in place. If your watch crashes during an activity, your data up yo the crash is still available and will be synced. (I know from experience, unfortunately)

For me, a session is from the moment you press start til you press end and save.
In between, there could be all sort of things. Laps is one, transitions from swimming to biking to running. (Or other things, like skiing and shooting). If I stop an activity and resume later, that is still 1 session. This is all how suunto watches work now.
The only difference is that you don’t have to leave the (limited) pause screen in focus, but can return to watch mode (as in non-sport mode) and gps is turned off to save battery.

And for your holiday activities on a map. That is already possible. You can already show your activities on a map in the suunto app. You can even select a period to only show activities for.

And your, discussion out of recalcitrance put a smile on my face and a bit of recognition. I switched from Garmin to Suunto to have less annoyances and I don’t like they wy garmin adds functions just to have the longest featurelist (for marketing purposes). But if I have use for it, it’s ok. I don’t need all the so called scientific bodybattery/recovery/trainingload blah blah. But I know others see that differently.