Open water swimming suddenly stops reading gps

thanasis · 31 Jul 2022, 07:40

Hi all ,
It seems that open water swimming has some issues :
In 2 occasions over the weekend it seems the watch stopped reading the gps after checking the screen .

What I did was the following :
Started the activity while in sea with gps lock and hr reading , the watch started perfectly well, a few minutes afterwards I checked the screen( didn’t press anything , just a few seconds checked the reading) it seems that when I went back at the beach and stoped the activity the watch didn’t record anything after the moment you checked on the screen .

The exact same happened today also . Reading across the net it seems that some other people are facing the same issue . Is it firmware or hardware related ? Are we expecting any fix for that ?

Thanks

Grillo54 · 31 Jul 2022, 16:05

@thanasis I have the same problems I had 2 open water swimming today one around 4000m and the second one about 2000m and it recorded only around 200m each time

pilleus · 31 Jul 2022, 16:47

I experienced this behaviour twice during a kayak workout. No more GPS after changing the screen.

freeheeler · 31 Jul 2022, 17:24

we should not mix up issues here.
S7 not recording correctly can be due to swim style with permanently submerged watch.
S9P stopping or rebooting during an activity might be a firmware issue. Did you @thanasis try with different settings and check if it keeps stopping the record?

thanasis · 31 Jul 2022, 20:10

@freeheeler what kind of setting? I don’t know what to do exactly . I tried to set gps to normal mode ? But the result was the same this afternoon . Just 154m recorded out of 1200 approx

freeheeler · 31 Jul 2022, 20:40

@thanasis
what swim style do you practice?

Grillo54 · 1 Aug 2022, 04:38

@thanasis exactly the same , and by my experience it depends also on the zone I swim if I swim in genoa it works well 95% times if I swim near Bergeggi island it doesn’t work 90% times , sometimes it uppervalue only meters but more times it lost gps signal, I changed also gps precision but it was the same

freeheeler · 8 Jan 2022, 05:14

@Grillo54
2 different watches and the same issue that shouldn’t happen when crawling
when I use open water swimming mode with my watch, it works perfectly when crawling. (same with my wifes S7). It doesn’t record anything when using swimming but switching on the gps… or when practicing any other swim style.
if this happens to you frequently and you observe a pattern, please don’t forget to send logs

Grillo54 · 1 Aug 2022, 08:51

@freeheeler
Here you can see my problems

Grillo54 · 1 Aug 2022, 12:05

@Grillo54

Another issue about my suunto 7 compared with a garmin of a friend of mine who swam with me 2 oct 2021 you can see how garmin it is more precise and there is also a big difference about the length of the swim and garmin it is more precise

thanasis · 8 Dec 2022, 10:42

@freeheeler I don’t know what is happening but s9p has a serious flaw then .

https://share.icloud.com/photos/00aOkH1BElRpx4k4YKfKMrLeA

The green represents the course whereas the red is that s9p recorded . It seems to me that the watch cannot be used for openwater swimming

freeheeler · 12 Aug 2022, 12:48

@thanasis
I am sorry that you have bad experience with tracking OWS. OWS works very well with my S9B and S9P shouldn’t be any worse.
There was another thread where S7 users mentioned basically inexistent recording and my wife has no issues with her S7 whatsoever.
I know for sure that any other swim style than crawling does not work as the watch is submerged too much to record.

Did you try to change settings, too? like different battery modes, power settings, different combination of satellite systems?

thanasis · 12 Aug 2022, 14:22

@freeheeler said in Open water swimming suddenly stops reading gps:

@thanasis
I am sorry that you have bad experience with tracking OWS. OWS works very well with my S9B and S9P shouldn’t be any worse.
There was another thread where S7 users mentioned basically inexistent recording and my wife has no issues with her S7 whatsoever.
I know for sure that any other swim style than crawling does not work as the watch is submerged too much to record.

Did you try to change settings, too? like different battery modes, power settings, different combination of satellite systems?

I have Done all of them . I mentioned that many other users have reported the same and it seems that it is device specific . My ambit 3 peak has no issues whatsoever

herlas · 12 Aug 2022, 15:57

I’ve done OWS with both A3P and S9P quite a lot recently and S9P convinced me to leave the A3P at home, the GPS tracks are better than with A3P, the only issues I have with S9P are no temperature recorded unless S+ weather is used, and heart rate summary (avg, min or max) not displaying for my auto laps when using the smart belt, think both are reported to Suunto

thanasis · 8 Dec 2022, 16:58

@herlas i am not talking about marginal differences… my s9p stops recording the track and resumes after some time or even not at all …

See the posts above to better understand. If this is hardware related I am happy to send it but some other users seem to complain about the same

herlas · 8 Dec 2022, 19:00

Right I do get it, I’m doing freestyle swimming and haven’t seen your issue with my S9P, hope you get it sorted out soon

angela angela · 25 Aug 2022, 08:56

@thanasis have you added + glonass on you gps system?

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos · 25 Aug 2022, 14:23

From my experience if the s9p is submerged a coupe of minutes it takes more to recover than other watches I have used.

angela angela · 19 Sept 2022, 15:53

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos It seems i have a similar issue with my s9p on open water swimming only on start though.I allready locked gps 3 minutes before swimming, i press start, i start swimming and meters stay at zero . I have to stop swimming, keep hand out of water for 15 seconds and then it starts counting. That would be a big problem on open water swimming race. This did not happen at all on my s5. Anyone have found a way to resolve this? Thank you.

thanasis · 19 Sept 2022, 16:00

@angela-angela said in Open water swimming suddenly stops reading gps:

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos It seems i have a similar issue with my s9p on open water swimming only on start though.I allready locked gps 3 minutes before swimming, i press start, i start swimming and meters stay at zero . I have to stop swimming, keep hand out of water for 15 seconds and then it starts counting. That would be a big problem on open water swimming race. This did not happen at all on my s5. Anyone have found a way to resolve this? Thank you.

actually I feel it is not possible to rely on my watch as it stands at the moment. Maybe it is hardware related and maybe applies to specific LOT but unfortunately I have had major issues that make it useless for OWS including your case @angela-angela