Important news concerning our digital services
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@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos Thank you for the detailed information about the transformation to the Suunto phone app.
Right now, i am a very unhappy Suunto customer. I bought an Ambit3 about six months ago. It works well and the Movescount web interface gives me all the data I really need. However, I do not own a smartphone and I don’t want to buy one. There are two reasons for this:
- expense of buying a phone and the expense of paying for a data package. I live in Canada. Our phone rates are higher than just about anywhere else in the developed world.
- i find the small screens difficult to read, and the touch technology difficult to use. Neither my eyesight nor my fine-motor control are what they were a few decades ago.
I have just spoken with Suunto tech support on the phone (yes, I can at least use a dumb phone
and they suggesed that Movescount would be discontinued in early 2020. Hopefully, this will give people like me enought time to change Suunto’s decsiion to dicontinue web support.run well, run happy
george -
@georgewreid thanks George!
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@georgewreid
After 24 hours consideration my position is:-
I have owned and used suunto products for decades. My first was a dive compass in seventies, my baseplate compass is a suunto (much better than Silva), I’ve had suunto HRMs and now have an original ambit. It does everything I require. My main sport is fell running, it’s against the rules to use a GPS as navigation skills and mountaincraft are intrinsic parts of the sport. But you can record your route and download it afterwards for analysis and you can use it to nav in an emergency provided you declare yourself non competitive and retire from the race.
I also record my route for the same reason in orienteering competitions, use the watch for general hill walking and cycling.After movescount is discontinued I will still be able to record time, distance, altitude, heart rate but wonder if the lack of satellite updates will eventually affect accuracy for nav. I won’t be able to input waypoints, amend my biometrics or analyse routes - a big loss. I will be able to obtain my grid coordinates to fix my position if needed and navigate traditionally from there.
On balance, as I believe my nav is competent so don’t use the watch for this purpose ‘live’ the changes will make my ambit little better than a basic HRM.
I’d also very much like to support the calls for any future platform to be pc compatible.
Finally, to the people who don’t see this as a problem, how would you feel if in five years suunto told you that they were discontinuing android to support iOS or Windows phones or vice versa leaving your perfectly functioning and capable expensive but of kit redundant? For all we know they might be planning that already, they didn’t decide to switch off movescount overnight, they must have decided some time ago. -
@MarkG
hi Mark,
maybe i misunderstand something about the coming changes. After Movescount is discontinued, how will you be able to record time, distance, etc, ? Do you mean by looking at the watch after a run, and writing the displays on paper ? (ok, you could also type them into a spreadsheet or something)
As far as I can tell, Moveslink and Movescount are the only digital way to get the data from the watch.run well, run happy
george -
@valdis830 This is pretty stupid comment as this decision will also impact owners of dive computers that are still being sold as we talk. These computer are not used on a daily basis like other watch as most people tend to dive once or twice a year, so we expect to have a lot of use for these devices, especially when they sell you separately a cable for $80 to sync your device!
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I’ve been trying to decide whether or not to post here, but I figured in the end I will, just for the hell of it.
I’m a new Suunto customer, since September 2018. I’ve got a Suunto 9 baro and Movescount from my point of view has always been a secondary element to how I get the info from my watch. As the Suunto app has developed since then, there’s been less and less need for me to go into MC and following the latest (beta) update where you can now import .gpx routes into the app and add them to your watch that way, there’s no need at all for me to use MC. As far as I’m concerned, it could close today and I wouldn’t miss it.
I do like to look at my activities via a pc, I like the big screen and think it’s pretty essential to have this. That being said, I use other services to do this (not via Suunto), so I can carry on as I am now. I plan routes in using other software, save the .gpx and import it to my watch using the app. Any analysis can be done using the Strava site and I’ll carry on using them. If Strava don’t provide a web service I won’t be upset, I’m not going to sell my watch and demand that all my friends and family do the same thing, but I will be surprised. I’ll be surprised because I think it’s a daft business decision not to do so. There’s clearly a market for people where they want to analyse what they’ve done and plan routes and Suunto is forcing people to find alternatives to this, instead of using the data they already have and packaging it up on a web page.
So this announcement doesn’t really affect me that much, I know. But there’s loads of others out there like me who are adapting to the way the company is going (and others like this as well). Look for alternatives and see what you can get. It’s not all doom and gloom, you might even find something you like better out there (I tried route planning on MC, couldn’t get along with the fact it would snap you to a path and wouldn’t recognise certain paths, even though I knew there was one there, so I found a better service to do that).
And to those who will ask “How would you feel if Suunto said your watch would be useless in 5years time?” I’d say this: I’d adapt. Find an alternative way that would mean I could still use my watch and go with that. Or upgrade. Change happens, adapt with it or you’ll get left behind
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@georgewreid
I fully agree with you.
Today I can see in the Mouvscount for example how many vertical meters I have made in 2018.
I can do a track which I ran a year ago.
Don’t know if this will work on a smartphone that easy and user-friendly. -
@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos I understand that. But announcing that all these devices would no longer be supported from 2020 was bound to start a firestorm. Even if Suunto relents the damage to your brand has been irreversibly done. It all makes Suunto look incredibly bad. I can only think they are trying it on and will only keep supporting Ambit 2s etc if people kick up a huge stink. I will probably never buy another Suunto product again.
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Not having a facility to upload moves from an Ambit from 2020 is very unfair.
I’m a huge supporter of Suunto & highly recommend your tech to anyone that listens! I had a really positive interaction with your Twitter team in December who sourced a new strap for my Ambit so to lose connectivity in 2020 ruins it all for me!!
I had intended purchasing a new ‘everyday’ watch soon, now that the Ambit will be unsupported in 2020 I will have to buy a training watch - and unfortunately it won’t be a Suunto as I have lost my trust in you. -
Thanks for the moves-memories Swnto! I’m tapping out now. No confidence in your future development. Love my Quests and GPS Trackpods and Movescount on big screen. Hate using apps. Hello new watch with web-based tracking and simple interface. 3 Quests, 2 trackpods, Ambit Run…all working just fine! Only hope is Suunto being ought by a competitor before all the watches are not supported by anything.
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As Im skiing in the forests nearby where I live, I use my Ambit2 + Movescount to plan routes in rather tough terrain. Many times the A2 has saved me when the weather has changed to the worse. To learn that Movescount is to be discontinued in 2020 makes me baffled! Is it really true? OK, Suunto, I’m ready to pay a monthly fee to keep it running! I’m already paying 5EUR/month för a GPS-tracker service! So a fee in that order would be ok! But I suspect that it is already to late
the competition is fierce in this segment (just look at the new wristwatches now coming that in addition to HR also can store the EKG signal (Withings Move ECG)). Interesting, Withings was bought by another Finnish company, Nokia, but now the original owners has bought it back! -
@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos I know it’s all been said and that you are only the messenger, so please log my official complaint and add me to the numbers. The fact that there is even a possibility that Suunto will sunset Ambit3 support is disingenious, immoral, and unethical. I have two Ambit3 Peaks (one sapphire!) and recommend it to everyone in my ultra-running community. In fact one of my friends just bought an Ambit3 Peak new (from the Suunto website nonetheless!) last week.
If Suunto phases out movescount before their new app is stable and working with FULL functionality for their older products it will be a travesty as well as the end of my relationship with the company. At the very least we need to be able to change Sport Modes, update firmware, and transfer routes from our Ambit 3 to the new Suunto software.
This is one of the worst examples of customer service and public relations I have seen in a company in a long time.
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are some of the moderators counting how many existing customer here are voicing out to abandon the Brand and quitting Suunto after just two days passed with the Jan.15 announcement and the news for "old’ devices are not supported in next year? this is more as alarming for the decision maker at Suunto…
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Adding my voice.
I bought Suunto Ambit in beginning of 2013 because I saw Movescount and was very impressed by its capabilities. That was leagues ahead of anything I could do in Garmin Connect. I was really proud of my Ambit that served me well and less than two years later I upgraded to Ambit3. I kept recommending Ambit3 and Movescount to everyone, easily to hundreds of people, describing powerful analysis scenarios that could be done with Movescount that weren’t possible on other platforms. This year I upgraded to Suunto 9 - my third Suunto watch. I should mention I was somewhat reluctant to upgrade to Suunto 9 because I was already seeing a trend of Suunto discontinuing some features that made the Ambit line so great.And now this! Suunto replaces a great platform that is still one of the best with a half-baked toy app which in my opinion is worse than Strava, and that means a lot!
There are many features of Movescount that seems to be lost in transition that I afraid are never coming back. And giving Suunto’s recent track record of dropping Ambit features in Spartan and Suunto 9 models I don’t have much confidence that Suunto App will evolve into a comprehensive platform like Movescount is!
A few examples of what Movescount has that I think SA will never have:
- Ability to overlay multiple arbitrary metrics and align their progression with the track on map. For example I can see how my cadence changed on different parts of the course or what was my vertical speed on a long climb and whether I could sustain it over longer time, or how my EPOC changed over a duration of a longer efforts, which would show of how sustainable my effort was.
- I could come up with my own synthetic metrics and graph them just like any built-in metrics. How about time ahead/behind a goal pace during a marathon? Would SA ever have anything like that?
- I could switch between distance and time on x-axis and zoom into arbitrary parts of my activity and find e.g. all stops that I did during a run and how much time total I was stopped.
- I could aggregate arbitrary metrics over time over multiple activities to see trends. SA offers some of that for a few specific metrics, but that is limited to last 30 days only. I couldn’t see trends for arbitrary metrics like average cadence or vertical gain.
- I could easily see breakdown by multiple sports. SA is very one-sided and seems to be geared more towards general fitness crowd rather than multi-sport athletes.
- I could design routes with waypoints - all in one place without having to deal with multiple services. And I could search for public routes that others already created on Movescount and use them on my watch.
- I could manage multiple Suunto watches with one account.
Anyway, I could probably continue like that. It is very sad that Suunto is throwing its baby with bathwater just because it needed a more modern smartphone app. This will erode trust of many loyal customers. I doubt that many current Ambit/Ambit2/Ambit3 users will upgrade to newer Suunto watches after this.
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@silentvoyager said in Important news concerning our digital services:
Suunto replaces a great platform that is still one of the best with a half-baked toy app which in my opinion is worse than Strava
fully agree, thanks for summarizing so well the advantages movescount.com has compare to the Suunto App in terms of training analysis, trending, deep data handling, multiple activity compare and review and multi device support, Kudos for this!
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Definitely, this is a perfect example for business schools and communication teachers: “How a big company is perfectly capable to create a solution for a non-existent problem, and how to try to teach clients to see an unicorn when you are showing just a slipper, if they can’t see the unicorn, it doesn’t matter, you could maintain your position, or let some employers with no charge dealing with anger clients”.
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@ColdBeer said in Important news concerning our digital services:
company is perfectly capable to create a solution for a non-existent problem
exactly, instead of using an working solution and adopt them to new watches, they take an complete outsider solution tuning it up exclusively for a new watch (Suunto Fitness) and after an year asking:
“Hey, do we really need support old watches as well? By the way, how many different types are out there? Ah, so many … let’s announce them EOL”Lunatic!
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@silentvoyager wow, I didn’t know movescount can do all that. I’m a new suunto user so went straight to SA, now having second thoughts even though I like SA basic functionality. Emphasis ‘basic’.
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@Droro
Movescount web is great for workout analysis. SA currently only serves to sync workouts. Full stop.You should try it at least for the remaining time it still has
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I want to start off by saying that I know as little about the future direction of the SA or Suunto’s plans going forward as anyone else commenting here, but that said I will add what I do know:
The Suunto App is very much a work in progress, and there are – at least – another 18 months to go before the company would consider it ready enough for prime time for it to scrap Movescount.
While SA still has leaps and bounds by which it needs to improve to have even some of MC’s basic functionality (cough, POIs, cough, exporting FIT files, cough), it has improved by enormous leaps and bounds in far less time than that already.
I’ve been using the app as a beta with my Spartan since early last spring, shortly after the Android beta became available. All it did back then was pull workout data from the watch and put it in the Sports Tracker database, if I could get it to connect at all. No sending those workouts off to any other services, no diary section with step counts, calories, sleep tracking, etc. No control of the watch at all: no customization whatsoever, no route planning, no heatmaps, nothing. It looked and worked like an experimental version of the Sports Tracker app that could pull a little data from a few watches. The ability to do any of those other things in the app has been built from scratch over the course of the last eight months or so.
While a heck of a lot clearly remains to be done over the next 18 months before Movescount goes away (and remember, that’s the minimum amount of time, it could stay around for longer than that), what remains to be done, while significant, is window dressing compared to what’s already been done in half that time, which probably explains why the company saw fit to announce the eventual changeover now.
And for people with Ambit3s and Traverses, consider this: the app didn’t work at all with any of those watches until a couple of months ago. A couple of months of basic functionality versus a minimum of 18 months of active development to go before Movescount leaves. A lot can happen between now and then, and a lot more has happened in half that time.
All that said, if I had an older watch like a T6 or an Ambit2 or didn’t use a smartphone, I’d probably be singing a very different tune right now. Here’s what we do know right now: the company only said Movescount will eventually go away. There was no word about Suuntolink, Moveslink or Moveslink2 going anywhere. As long as those things continue to be able to link a watch with a computer, update GPS, and get workout data onto that computer in some straightforward manner for users to be able to do with it whatever they want, all that actually remains to be done to ensure continued full functionality is for there to be a way for users to get routes and settings from their computer to the watch; there’s no reason Movescount has to be necessary for any of that in the future.
That said, I wish Suunto had been a heck of a lot more clear about all of that in their statement the other day, especially with watches and users needing a cable to computer connection. One of the biggest reasons I got a Spartan when I finally decided to join the 21st century and get a GPS watch was Suunto’s reputation for making durable, long lasting stuff. It’s really central to their image, and when poking through the guts of different companies’ websites and finding that Suunto continued to make available support software downloads for watches that were made 12 to 15 years ago, that’s one of the things that most convinced me to go in this direction: that they did in fact have things that old that were still in the wild, still being used, and still being supported. If that were to all change now, that would change everything, and not in a good way.
But there’s still at least a year and a half to go and a lot more that can be cleared up and changed over an awful lot of time, so for now I remain hopeful.
