Future of the Spartan Line

Michał Rudzki

@theorydude I am not expecting to get thousands of new feature, I am only expecting to get bugs that are in the watch firmware nothing more… any try of contacting with support ends on quote “we are working internally and we can’t say when it happens” besides mixing Rolex watch with Smartwatch isn’t on the place.

Egika

@Michał-Rudzki in your post in this thread (Dec 29) you ask for a lot of additional features (which is legit and most of them others would like to see as well) - now you are talking about bugs.
What substantial bugs are there left in the Spartans that don’t allow to use it according to the specs?

Michał Rudzki

@Egika what features I am only expecting improving what is already in the watch and fixing some noting bugs and behavior that has been thousands of thousands of times commented by the community. I agree with the fact that Spartan will not get any new features because of X line. Regarding your note, on Dec 29 not all was known regarding Spartan Line and it’s not a necessity to catch me for a ‘word’ what I would like to have in an unsupported watch that is still sold in Amazon even in Suunto Shop. For most communities, it’s obvious if you are selling something you should support it.

Egika

@Michał-Rudzki ok, now we better stop argueing, because this goes in circles.

My Spartan Trainer had an issue last year and was replaced within days.
This is what I call support. And it works nicely with all watches Suunto is selling as of today - including Ambit3

Otherwise the watches are what they are. And if your definition of support is an ongoing change in firmware, yes, then there is no support for older models like Spartans (while there has been a fix around new year, when the date issue came up. That’s support - isn’t it?)

zhang965

@Michał-Rudzki said in Future of the Spartan Line:

@Egika what features I am only expecting improving what is already in the watch and fixing some noting bugs and behavior that has been thousands of thousands of times commented by the community. I agree with the fact that Spartan will not get any new features because of X line. Regarding your note, on Dec 29 not all was known regarding Spartan Line and it’s not a necessity to catch me for a ‘word’ what I would like to have in an unsupported watch that is still sold in Amazon even in Suunto Shop. For most communities, it’s obvious if you are selling something you should support it.

I totally agree with you, BUT

It’s time to move on.

Suunto has their own problem, not only for supporting one line of watch.

I was an user both of Spartan ultra ans S9B for long time. I know, they did provide any improvement for Spartan Ultra since long time, so what? S9B has no improvement either…

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

@zhang965 no it doesn’t have any imporvements. No we didn’t add the vo2 that you asked, no we are not developing the software, no it didn’t don’t get suunto plus.

W t f dude ?

Oh wait. It’s monday. The time when people have to go and s***

Mi_chael

SuuntoPlus is a good thing. The survey is full of nice feature but the wait is long…

zhang965

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos said in Future of the Spartan Line:

@zhang965 no it doesn’t have any imporvements. No we didn’t add the vo2 that you asked, no we are not developing the software, no it didn’t don’t get suunto plus.

W t f dude ?

Oh wait. It’s monday. The time when people have to go and s***

Yes, of course, but we(you and me) didn’t mention the same time stamp.

Your time stamp is just a little bit earlier than my mention.

What I wanted to share with Michel, was Spartan has been released almost since 5 years.

It’s the time to move on.

If a gps watch’s support cycle is about 2 -3 years, S9B is getting over as well.

If you want a Rolex then buy a Rolex.

You cannot ask a 600dollers watch to become a real Rolex right?

Egika

@zhang965 said in Future of the Spartan Line:

You cannot ask a 600dollers watch to become a real Rolex right?

Definitely time for a Rolex watch face

lexterm77

@Egika

Egika

@lexterm77
Suunto looks better

lexterm77

@Egika said in Future of the Spartan Line:

@lexterm77
Suunto looks better

Yes, looks slicker, plus something is wrong with bt on my sub, it won’t sync

theorydude

I appreciate all the replies - some valid points made. It’s a valid argument to consider whether a watch/line is too old, and time to move on. That’s why I dropped my Ambit 2 and got the Spartan. What frustrated me - and continues to frustrate me - is that they dropped a major swim feature - kick/drill. I (stupidly) didn’t confirm that something so fundamental would be dropped, and didn’t confirm it was there in the Spartan. For people who swim competitively, not being able to track kicking and drills is huge -it can be 1/3 to 1/2 of a given workout, depending. If you’re a runner, it’s like not being able to measure cadence, I guess. Triathletes don’t miss it, really, because when they train swimming, they mostly lap swim and often avoid kick stuff to “save their legs” (I know a lot of triathletes). What Suunto does, it does well, and has great hardware - I just don’t get dropping such a fundamental feature.

peringmar

Earlier today I made a post that got closed because of this one duplicate so I guess I will have to answer here.

In my post I went into some detail of my take on this. It is long so the short summery is that I believe that the consumer, environment and Suunto as a company could benefit of long-time watch support and that if Suunto could not provide the update for free because of development costs, that they should sell it for a fair price.

Link to my post: https://forum.suunto.com/topic/6791/update-the-spartan-series-software

@saketo-nemo while it could be hardware related I doubt it. Resources and fitness-level are two additional screens in the menu. Snap to route is literally the reverse of the already present “remaining distance to end of route” plus a threshold when off route and the turn to turn is not really supported on the spartan, when activated it is only a bunch of annoying waypoints that do not tell anything.

@jsuarez I totally agree with you that the spartan seems EOL. Which I think is absurd because of the spartan still being a totally capable device. Obviously, the watch is not as “snappy” as the S9 when navigating menus, but totally justifiable for its age. For extra features I would even tolerate less “snappiness”. Some things on the old Suunto OS were neat, like the bar chart of activities.

DMytro

@peringmar I’m not so sure about it. Picture a subset of suunto users who don’t want to upgrade yet, then a subset of those who are willing to pay extra for the new update, never mind that Spartan is a line and not a single watch, so fw should be fine tuned for each and every watch. Tbh I think it’s a rather small number, so it’s probably still not economically viable.
As alternative I might suggest you buy a new watch if features are a deal-breaker for you and, either give your watch to suunto so that they can recycle it, or resell your watch, so other can use it, or just have two watches: Spartan for regular stuff and new watch for training where new features are crucial.
Extra features for additional price would be interesting to see though and I agree that is better to keep the old watch.

peringmar

@DMytro You may be right, thank you for all the suggestions, however as of now the features are not really a deal breaker for me but just something that would be nice to have.

@peringmar said in Future of the Spartan Line:

Earlier today I made a post that got closed because of this one duplicate so I guess I will have to answer here.

In my post I went into some detail of my take on this. It is long so the short summery is that I believe that the consumer, environment and Suunto as a company could benefit of long-time watch support and that if Suunto could not provide the update for free because of development costs, that they should sell it for a fair price.

Link to my post: https://forum.suunto.com/topic/6791/update-the-spartan-series-software

@saketo-nemo while it could be hardware related I doubt it. Resources and fitness-level are two additional screens in the menu. Snap to route is literally the reverse of the already present “remaining distance to end of route” plus a threshold when off route and the turn to turn is not really supported on the spartan, when activated it is only a bunch of annoying waypoints that do not tell anything.

@jsuarez I totally agree with you that the spartan seems EOL. Which I think is absurd because of the spartan still being a totally capable device. Obviously, the watch is not as “snappy” as the S9 when navigating menus, but totally justifiable for its age. For extra features I would even tolerate less “snappiness”. Some things on the old Suunto OS were neat, like the bar chart of activities.

I saw your post, and am curious what features were lost during movescount transition (never had a spartan).
If you lost functions, maybe you have some “right” to claim them. And maybe it is doable to implement them app wise and be compatible with spartans.

Regarding new functions:

selling an update , mostly not viable, and would be highly criticable . I rembember when apple asked you to pay upgrades for ipod touch…they were so much criticized.
Also, if the watch is already not snappy, it will be even worst, most likely if suunto implemented features that turn it slower, costumer would say it is programmed obsolescence.
Something Suunto “said” already they are against (hence the upgrades for all S series, and compatibility of spartans/ambit with Suunto App (maybe not the way users found perfect, but better than a paper weight).
Have you checked other brands watches from 2016, what upgrades with new features they got? I checked the 735XT and the Fenix 3…only bug fixes, and if you check their forums, you will found a lot of complains that this last updated rendered the watch with even more bugs

I am not protecting suunto or whatever, I pay for my watches, but things are not as easy as it may seem, and grass is not as green as it may seem on the other side.

peringmar

@andré-faria said in Future of the Spartan Line:

selling an update , mostly not viable, and would be highly criticable . I rembember when apple asked you to pay upgrades for ipod touch…they were so much criticized.
Also, if the watch is already not snappy, it will be even worst, most likely if suunto implemented features that turn it slower, costumer would say it is programmed obsolescence.

Agree that paying for software is an unpopular opinion, when we are used to a lot of high-quality software being free. As a uni student I love free stuff, especially software, but paying a small sum would still be the cheaper option than buying a whole new watch. Also, apple takes a cut for pretty much any in app purchase consumers make/iphone accessory consumers buy and maybe that is why there really was not a need for them to sell the update when consumers already “pay” for it in other ways (I am not trying to defend apple). So maybe it is more justifiable if a smaller company like suunto does it when there is not really the same income that old devices generate compared to apple.

Regarding the snappiness of the watch, I may have made it sound worse that it really is, and I personally only noticed it when comparing both watch models side by side. The two extra menu screens (fitness-level and resources) are static so I doubt it will be a huge hit for the hardware.

Have you checked other brands watches from 2016, what upgrades with new features they got? I checked the 735XT and the Fenix 3…only bug fixes, and if you check their forums, you will found a lot of complains that this last updated rendered the watch with even more bugs

I have not owned a sport watch from any other brand than Suunto so I cannot comment on bugs or features of other watches. Could it be that there was no need for new feature updates because of features that suunto has implemented later were already present at launch?

Mff73

@peringmar
just to know, what feature are missing from Movescount with Spartan ?

peringmar

@mff73
@andré-faria
It is now quit some time ago but from what I can remember there where two bar charts displaying the three most activities in time and distance in a nice way. In the logbook, the avg pace/HR was displayed with a horizontal line over the charts. Then there was also a page for planned trainings. This last one I am not really shore about, but I believe that when I wore my HR belt and went into the HR on demand it took my HR from it.

Movescount specific would only be the planned trainings.