Suunto Vertical: Bug Collection

Gilles D.

hello,
I would like to report a kind of display issue after having done a swimming workout. As you can below, the logbook of the watch displays 0 m :

And fortunately the actual distance (1125m) has been well transferred to the App :

It is not the first time I did a swim activity with the Vertical, but the first time I had this kind of display issue. What was different in my practice : I browsed though the various screens of the standard swim mode.

Todd Danielczyk

@slurpnik Something is definitely off in regard to this and personally I have the same backlight in maps as I do throughout the GUI, independent of being in map, time or activity.

I know it is a stretch, but it may be worthwhile soft resetting the Vertical to see if it corrects the issues you are seeing.

surfboomerang

@slurpnik I don’t know if it is the picture or your screen is really this dark, but I never use the backlight during the day and even then, my screen is way more readable than your picture. Especially on a sunny day.
I use the white background, black digits theme.

Do you have the DND setting enabled by any chance?

jjpaz

@slurpnik Energy saving mode?

cosme.costa

@Gilles-D I think is a known issue that will be addressed in the next firmware from what I have read in other forums.

cosme.costa

@slurpnik I haven’t had this issue but looks to me something related to the light sensor. I would perform a soft reset and review all the screen configurations.

slurpnik

@cosme-costa @jjpaz @surfboomerang @Todd-Danielczyk thank you all for your tips, I appreciate your help! I will try them next time it happens. It wasn’t Do not disturb or Power saving, those were off. Maybe the sensor issue as @cosme-costa mentioned, although the backlight and display started to work right after I finished the activity, which was weird. I am not sure soft reset would have helped, I did it very shortly before that due to another bug (touchscreen and ghost button presses that happen to me around once every two weeks), but I will try next time.

I am sad my Vertical so far hasn’t lived up to “simple in functionality, but reliable” yet I’ll keep trying to work around these issues.

darxmurf

On my side, HR Sensor issue is back. I left the watch for 3 days and it turned off again.

Egika

@slurpnik the screen of the Vertical is built to be brighter with more sunlight.
Backlight is only there for no or very little ambient light, like indoors or at night.

This is different to phone screens or the screen of Suunto Race, which need more backlight in brighter conditions.
Something seems to be wrong with your display. Have you restarted the watch?
Mine (without any backlight) looks like this (sorry for the smudge):

sartoric

@slurpnik
Do you have a screen protector ? Polarized ?

Egika

@sartoric good catch!
Looks indeed like one from the pictures.

Get rid of it!

Todd Danielczyk

@sartoric didn’t even think about that one! Could also be the reason for the irrational touch screen.

wmichi

@slurpnik I have similar issues as you, although not in direct sunlight. The backlight (or raise to wake) during activities is very unreliable. In direct sunlight it’s not a problem, but in a forrest with changing light conditions, the display is hardly readable, because the backlight never turns on. I have done soft resets and hard resets, no luck. I cannot even activate the backlight in the activity settings. It simply doesn’t make difference, the backlight stays off. Only when it’s generally dark, the backlight turns on when I raise my wrist. So my guess would be, that this backlight sensor is not working correctly.

When I am sitting in the sun (during an activity) and I raise the wrist, backlight stays off (as expected). If i cover the display with my hand and I raise my wrist, it takes 5s to 10s until the backlight turns on, and most of the time it doesn’t turn on at all and I have to do the raise to wake gesture multiple times, until it finally turns on.

This was definitely not a problem on the previous firmware.

Todd Danielczyk

@wmichi @slurpnik one thing you may want to also check is if this is selected off or on in battery mode.

I run mine off in custom mode and wondering if that’s what you have set up. Could explain why it goes dark during an activity and wakes up when buttons are pressed. Wouldn’t hurt to confirm

wmichi

@Todd-Danielczyk I only use performance mode (I have also checked this setting). It’s not that the screen goes completely off, it’s just the backlight, that won’t turn on. Or let’s put it in another way: the backlight sensor takes a long time to react to changes of the lightning conditions. Much longer as on the previous firmware.

Todd Danielczyk

@wmichi thank you for confirming

slurpnik

Thank you all for great discussion! I took a few days to experiment and wanted to get back to you.

@sartoric Indeed, very good eye! I did have a screen protector to address the smudges (different thread here on forum). I got rid of it and continued my testing without it. Sadly, it’s not the screen protector that seems to be the issue.

@Egika my screen does not behave like you describe - somehow it is darker and less readable with more sunlight.

After a lot of testing, I came to minimal reproducible steps: no activity just regular watchface, display brigtness medium, standby Off, raise to wake high, no power saving, at 93% battery. When hold my watch and walk outside the house, the screen gets progressively less readable the more sunlight there is. When outside and trying to raise hand to activate backlight, it never does.

When I walk back inside the house, raise to wake starts working after a dozen seconds and with backlight the screen is usable again.

This seems to be the exact issue that @wmichi described, and in addition it seems like my display has some issue on direct sunlight. Since the issue is present even outside of activity, I don’t believe any activity settings affect this behavior.

I will try to capture some photos and share here. Do you think this is hardware issue with my watch? Anything else I should try?

EDIT: maybe I wasn’t totally precise, so let me correct the " somehow it is darker and less readable with more sunlight.". My screen does get slightly better when going outside, from totally dark to barely readable on sunlight. Problem is without backlight, which never turns on outside on sunlight, it stays in the “barely readable” state and I can’t force it to enable backlight (“backlight: on” seems ignored in activity options in the newest version).

duffman19

@slurpnik said in Suunto Vertical: Bug Collection:

Do you think this is hardware issue with my watch?

I’d say it’s almost certainly a hardware issue. The behavior you’ve described and shown with your pictures is the exact opposite of how a MIP display should work. As others have said, it should appear easier to read when outside or under brighter light. It should look almost like black ink on white paper under sunlight, no backlight required.

It almost appears as though there is a polarized filter in front of your screen, turned the wrong direction, causing the screen to appear darker under more light. Does anyone know how the Vertical’s screen is constructed, whether there might be a polarizing layer somewhere in there? If so, if it’s rotated 90 degrees in the wrong the direction, it might cause this exact behavior.

I’d try to get it back to Suunto if you can. Something is definitely wrong with it.

Zdeněk Hruška

@slurpnik I am not sure how it works on your watch but generally you should not have any backlight outside on the sun. MIP displays are readable without it. So it should not be an issue if the backlight doesn’t work outside on the sun. But maybe I don’t understand the issue

Mff73

@slurpnik
maybe it is time to let your watch be back for RMA