Digital Transition interview with Romain from Suunto

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

chrish

@Brad_Olwin I don’t think the S7 will ever be a viable outdoor oriented watch, WearOS will not, in the near future, likely have the necessary battery life to pull that off. It’s a smart watch OS bent into the shape of a Suunto-ish OS.

Alphabet could surprise us and produce a version of WearOS that doesn’t eat battery…but unlikely. Don’t think I’ve seen any smart watch manufacturer claim anything of the sort is on their ‘roadmap’ to date.

Gonna be hard pressed to beat the S9, or need to, if they can just get the few missing features into the mobile app and onto the watch itself. My toe and ankle have healed and I’m eagerly awaiting some S9 features, a purchase, and a return to the backcountry in the spring!!! Or, if I’m lucky, marginal functionality retained and I’ll just use my A3P.

Brad_Olwin

@chrish As of now the S7 will go 15-20h with FusedTrack. That plus maps makes it a pretty good outdoor watch. But it does not have a storm alarm, nor the features that the S9 has for outdoor activities (no altitude profile with a route loaded, for example). But I think for many it works.

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos said in Digital Transition interview with Romain from Suunto:

@sartoric where ? lol

On the video, about qs

Luís Pinto

@chrish We will see this solution greater each step. With new chipsets, (4100) “… reduce power consumption >25% and bring extended battery life to the platform.”, imagine with 5nm cpu process (qualcomm 4100 is 12nm…), and new graphene batteries.

I think would be great for S7 users to use also S+ add-ons. Suunto should use work already done for S5 and S9 and migrate to android OS. There are ressources very useful in S7 that wearOS brings.

Some people complain about the screen at the sun. Here with amoled technology there is not much to do.

Brad_Olwin

@Luís-Pinto I do not want everything to go Android, as an iPhone user, I find Google Assistant on the watch works perhaps 1/4 of the time. 3/4 of the time the watch can’t figure it out and states Google not available (it is) or simply does not respond. This is for setting a simple timer. Compared to Apple Watch OS it is a joke. I would rather not have all watches hobbled to Wear OS and I doubt they will be.

Luís Pinto

@Brad_Olwin Imagine people that want buy a AW… But, but, oh they need to have a iPhone. Google have to make much more to bring wearOS to other position.

I’m not a android fan, but on these days user experience is more and more app experience than OS.

Is more easy programming in proprietary OS or Android?

In initial S7 days i was not a big fan of concept. But i saw potential.

chrish

@Brad_Olwin Not my use case, but point taken. I want a watch that will last for a week or two, turn it on for a couple hours of GPS navigation as needed. S7 and WearOS is not going to provide that. The OS is going to eat that in a few days. How long will an S7 run just laying on a desk…if it’s a month, then OK.

chrish

@Luís-Pinto said in Digital Transition interview with Romain from Suunto:

screen

Yup. Graphene is the future. As soon as my ceramic coating wears off my car, gonna smear it w/ graphene

Fenr1r

@chrish said in Digital Transition interview with Romain from Suunto:

Yup. Graphene is the future. As soon as my ceramic coating wears off my care, gonna smear it w/ graphene

You could also have some on a bagel, if you’re not watching your carb.

chrish

@Fenr1r said in Digital Transition interview with Romain from Suunto:

You could also have some on a bagel, if you’re not watching your carb.

I suppose it could be edible…but I think I’ll pass. Car stuff is super strange, it comes out of the bottle black, goes on and dries clear. The future is now!

Brad_Olwin

@chrish You can put the S7 into PowerSave mode, it will show date and time and last for probably a month without a charge. So there is a workaround but I think no smartwatch will have the battery life you desire for a very long time. I top off my S7 when I shower, I used to when I drove to work. The watch charges fully in 1.5h so charging is not that big a deal. I can easily get 4h outdoor exercise/day and all day wear with the S7, just charging above as I stated.

chrish

@Brad_Olwin Yep, agreed, that was my point. No smartwatch will currently do that, Apple, WearOS, etc. Only smart-ish devices like the S9, Coros, A3P, and blah, Garmin are going to last that long on a charge sitting doing nothing. So the original comment I made, the S7 isn’t an truly outdoor oriented watch, stands. Yea, it’s fine for a day activity, maybe 2, then you need juice. I can run my A3P, or if it had the couple of extra features I need/want, an S9, for a whole week on a charge. That’s my definition of an outdoor watch, but maybe our definitions differ…which I think we’ve definitely established already in other threads/posts.

Brad_Olwin

@chrish if I only could have one, it would be the S9. Meets my needs better than any other past or present Suunto watch.

isazi

@Brad_Olwin in fact I went back to my S9 for every day wear now. I will certainly switch back to the S7 soon, but I will miss true 24/7 heart rate monitoring and sleep tracking.

chrish

@Brad_Olwin definitely. I’ve been lusting for an S9 baro since they came out. Will be my next purchase. The bearing lock feature almost sold me but with the poi rumors, I’m definitely on board in the near future.

fazel

@Brad_Olwin Amen.

Brad_Olwin

@isazi So, I wear the S7 during the day, workout with typically two or three watches that usually includes the S9 and S7 and sleep with an S3 (small and light). I like having my night HR, more informative than resources or sleep quality but I’ll take those too. The S3 is great for sleeping and I tested the following: Hard workout wearing S9 Resources from 86% to 25%. Strapped on the S3, which started at 50% (since I was not wearing it) but ended after a few hours near where the Resources should be ~30% prior to sleep. So, I just switch watches willy nilly. Would like to have the S7 track Resources, Sleep and HR too. The image below is wearing the S9 and switching to the S3, the jump to 50% is the S3 and the following image is nighttime to this morning with the S3, when I then strapped on the S7 again.
Screenshot 2020-12-04 at 1.46.50 PM.png
PNG image 2.png

Bulkan

@Brad_Olwin I’m using cardiogram in the s7 and export the data to csv and import it in Apple health using a shortcut, it is a bit slow but works. I like to have my heart rate data in Apple health, with the s9 it works, but not with the s7 (google fit instead of suunto app).

About working out with two or three watches, kudos!

Jamie BG

@chrish - would be interesting to see if the Casio option wouldn’t work.
Believe it can extend it tracking out to around 2 days and does it by only taking a gps fix every couple of mintues.

Also you could take a battery pack with you - its not a lot of extra weight and as Brad pointed out, it does charge quickly.

But agree its still the biggest issue of smartwatches compared to fitness watches in that in smartwatch mode battery life of fitness watches are superior, but then they don’t have the same level of connectivity.