Ambit3 - Will there still be support for battery-saving GPS settings, in sport-modes?
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This one tripped me, last weekend, when I realized I use my “long haul” modified ski touring settings, for when I’m ski touring for >1 day.
The same is true when bike touring, in the summer, I have a couple of modes where I reduce the GPS frequency/recording interval, which lets me get almost a week of data, on a bike tour, before needing to recharge, or worry about running out of battery.
Same for backpacking/climbing, it’s often multi-day (which works fine with less GPS frequency, very easy to get a 3-5 day trip in).
Without these settings, this effectively removes these activities, with the possible exception of “lugging along” a USB battery pack, to charge daily (not exactly an awesome solution, particularly for backpacking/climbing, where weight is a HUGE concern (batteries are heavy, by nature, and really heavy if you start talking about multiple charges on a trip).
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As long as you use previously configured sport modes that will include GPS refresh rate. But Suunto App doesn’t support making any new sport mode configurations for for Ambit3, so whatever you already have on watch, you are stuck with that. Is that what your question is about?
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@silentvoyager This is exactly what I was looking for. I can therefore do sport profiles with different GPS settings (e.g. 1s 10h or 10s 100h) and these settings will be maintained when MS is off. Thank you
The dilemma now is the gpx upload on the watch, once MS will be off
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@silentvoyager So your understanding is, it’s sort of “locked in”, at that point? I wonder what happens, if you have to reset it, or something else? Do you have a statement, or similar, that backs this up (not that I doubt you, but I don’t read this in the main Suunto statement, anywhere)?
I guess if you decide, later on, that you want another “low GPS/long battery life” activity (I could see this with trekking or something), then you’re sort of stuck, right?
Still better than “no low-GPS activities” though, by far.I have sport-modes (mainly my skiing ones) with apps, too, I wonder if I need to be “prepping” non-app modes, so I can push those, at the very last minute.
This is a bit of a “weird” conversation, if you ask me, we’re sort of “plotting” how to work around a change that’s going to affect almost half (about 45%) of the Suunto users (a LOT of whom probably have no idea, didn’t see the email, etc.).
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@pgrey Unless Suunto makes any serious design changes in Suunto App, which I think is unlikely, or keep supporting Movescount, Ambit3 and Traverse users are pretty much screwed. It isn’t just sport mode configurations. The same would apply to anything else that Movescount uploads to a watch including personal settings (age, HR zones), structured workouts, POIs, navigation routes, custom apps, etc.
The real problem is that Suunto decided to not support configuring most of these settings outside of a watch even for newer watches like Spartan or Suunto 9. All of these settings can now be changed only on a watch, or in some cases can’t be changed at all (e. g. Baro profiles for a sport mode). Before almost everything could be pushed to a watch. Now - almost nothing. The new protocol with the watch simply doesn’t support the legacy stuff, neither the recent watches. So we have a breaking change here. Either Suunto has to maintain two completely different protocols between SA and a watch or they have to drop the legacy support.
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@silentvoyager It seems like if they did a “layered design”, they could support both, without “tanking” the newer watches.
In this case, all the Ambit3 actual “heavy lifting” is just done by a module that gets the same parameters, regardless of which watch A3, S3, Ambit9…Modular/inherited design isn’t exactly new, and I’m pretty sure this how Garmin has managed to support a huge breadth of devices.
Now they’ve moved the date up, at least for being able to access the app, in-store (you can be sure I’ll save an apk, right before), so if you change a device, or whatever, it’s side-load-or-lose-it, by EOY, according to the recent “update”.
I hope you’re wrong about the lack of “Settings support” though, in the RTM app, that’s an excellent point about zones and such, I often adjust those seasonally.@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos I notice you “up-voted” my question here, did you ever get an answer, about being able to set the differing GPS modes, on the Ambit, in the app?
Do you have any thoughts about the rest of this, is there really going to be no way to adjust ANY of these, even something like your age or HR zones, with the new app? This seems like it would make it pretty much impossible to re-sell, at that point, since it’s “married to your body/stats/sports/whatever”?Surely this can be true, with a watch that’s being actively sold, today, with all of these features as “selling points”?
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@pgrey I am not sure at this point. I have no more info on the ambits but I am sure we will in May as said by Suunto
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@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos I can’t even figure out how to set up (i.e. install) a single sport-mode, from SA, am I missing something?
Say I want to add mountain-biking, to my watch, how do I do it?
More importantly, how do I do it, say if I get a new phone/device, on 1/5/20?The GPS-granularity thing is a HUGE deal, for some of my sports, and I’m confident I’m not alone. If they’re not going to ever add ANY settings, for the Ambit3 family, why don’t they just admit it?
If it’s just “the Ambit3 will have close to zero supported functionality”, can’t they just say that, so users can make informed decisions, going forward?It “seems” a bit like Suunto’s “April update” was mostly just “we see you’re commenting, we’re going to make it harder to install MC after 12/31/19 (a lot harder if you don’t know how to sideload), and maybe we’ll say something new, in May”?
I’m really, really trying not to be just a “negative poster” here, but I’m looking for the “positives”, in the process here?
