Ambit2 - spell it out for me...
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It’s a shambles. So someone in Sunnto decides to abandon support for watches sold recently, and abandon a perfectly good usb upload solution (Movescount) for a mobile app, that doesn’t connect to recently sold products, because these recently sold products don’t support Bluetooth. Madness!
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@Brad_Olwin I disagree with disgarding Ambit 1 or Ambit 2: these watches were built to last.
My dad was an early adopter of the Ambit (1), he still uses it for running, hiking, climbing, cycling today, happily uploading to Movescount.
I bought my Ambit 2 a few years back and it still works like a charm. I’ve taken it to -20°C, -30°C, no issues.
No idea how the touch screen/ bluetooth watches put up with this environment. (Would love to hear reviews)
I really don’t see a point in having fancy displays personally, but maybe I am just old fashioned for a 31 year old.I do strongly agree with your statement to wait and see (even do the black on white statement is a bit frightening to me).
People jumping to conclusions, giving up, going to Garmin…
Come Christmas time 2019, I guess I can make a proper decision, maybe I will be forced to buy a new watch.
If that is the case I will do the same as when I bought the Ambit 2: look at all my options and all manufacturers.
By then both Garmin and hopefully also Suunto will come with new innovations.Let’s sit out the storm, give Suunto our polite feedback and wait and see.
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@Annoyed This is not official communication since I do not have anything else to say that is stated in our web page but I’ve understood it in a way that we have legal obligations to support watches sold from a store for two years or so. I’ve also heard this rumor that we do not know when the last watch is actually sold from a store somewhere in this globe. So That may lead to a conclusion that we may have some time for Movescount to exist in a form or another. Of course there are options like making Movelink2 to connect other platform or Suuntolink to support Ambit/Traverse/etc.
From the Suunto application point of view the new application is not yet good for a real heavy Ambit3 users. It lacks a lot of mandatory features for many of those users. Best way to influence is to add requests and vote for them in this forum. I’m sharing the stats about the the votes (top 10) weekly internally.
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@Jouko-from-Suunto
Thank you for this post! I now have a better feeling about what Suunto is planning and I start to believe that Suunto actually hears their customers.
Nevertheless I think the communication is on the unlucky side at the moment.But I must say that Suunto has done a perfect job with the Ambit family. People that were looking for a simple, reliable watch that delivers important values for various sports, decided for an Ambit. Most Ambit users in my opinion are not the typical customers who would change to a smartwatch as soon as it is released on the market.
The Suunto Spartan was a big step in that direction, also to keep up with Garmin. And with the good battery life of the Suunto 9 plus maybe some more fancy features I think Suunto can catch more customers that need to decide between a Fenix 5 or a S9…
At the moment I think the web service and App are the biggest differences for these watches. And I don’t think that people buy a watch with having a third party web service supplier in mind from start.Let’s wait and see what Suunto offers us in the May News.
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@Jouko-from-Suunto How about the dead-simple stuff, like being able to install/change sport-modes, or a users’ physical and exercise characteristics?
While I get that (maybe) custom-sport-modes could fall off, it seems like being able to change the above is “core functionality”?
It also GREATLY affects the resale, if you can only sell to someone who wants your exact watch configuration (same EXACT athlete characteristics, same EXACT set of sports, etc).The “maybe we’ll sort of address this, sometime before we shut down MC” is a poor message. If I will never be able to adjust anything, ever again on my A3S’s (I have 2, 1 is 2.5YO, 2nd is 1YO), I want to resell them, now, and figure out what I’m moving to (something with a full-web platform, that part is certain, I already hate trying to compare route segments, on my phone, and I have a really high-DPI screen).
By keeping this part “secret”, Suunto is basically forcing customers to play “resale chicken”, with the EOY (app no longer available for mobile), and next summer…I’ve been a steady Suunto customer, since the early 2000’s, with the Vector, but I’m not moving to the SA-app platform, it’s just too hard to compare segments and data per-segment, etc, on a phone (I’ve spent a lot of time hunt-pecking my way around SA, an operation that takes maybe 5-10 seconds, on the MC web presence).
That’s a pretty terrible degradation in the overall customer-experience, IMHO. -
@pgrey The watch settings are also missing for the later patch of devices and I agree we should have them. They are requested a lot also from our internal testers and our choice of implementing something else first has been questioned a lot. My bet is that the business has reasons for their priority decisions, some may be related to a new watch some to other things I do not understand or know either. We have had some bad luck with especially Trainer quality and it has cost us dearly and we are quite tight on the finance, so the mobile teams are really a bit too small for all what we would need to do, so we have tough decisions still to make on the priority order and what comes first etc. I think the world is changing fast on this area and we need to be sharp and do our best to stay in the game. Garmin is the Goliath and we are smaller that the stone thrown at him. To my eye Polar has the exact same issues with their new platform that we did when Spartan came. Let’s see, I hope our customers will help us to do the right choices.
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@Jouko-from-Suunto
This sounds like Suunto has made some wrong decisions in the past.
Without knowing the market in depth I would have guessed that Suunto is one of the biggest players in the segment of GPS multisport watches.
I’m not sure if Suunto can rely on their customers and potential customers charity. For some users a watch is a nice toy, but some are really relying on their watch and need to trust in their equipment and service.Suunto customers do have very good ideas how the App and web service should look like. But what Suunto does in my eyes is: they put up a forum and say: please let us know what you want and need.
What forum users including me frequently do is dumping fragments of ideas, some people do upvote it and Suunto looks into this “letter cemetery” and picks up the few top most voted contributions.
What I personally think would be better is to start a poll on the movescount web page about key functions. Of course there should be an additional box to drop side comments. But for Suunto to analyze what’s needed or not it is much better to have an organized poll with tick boxes and simple questions. -
@TELE-HO about 1,5 week ago a poll popped up, when I logged in to MC. I thought this happened for every MC user, wasn’t it?
Questions were, what I use MC the most, sports,… and place for some free text… -
@radlwadl
when I installed SA for the second time to give it another try after the update I also received a popup on the phone to give feedback… but… giving feedback thru the phone is like looking at your activities on your phone… it’s simply not convenient!
And as far as I remember the popup did not ask for anything specific, just: how do you like it?
There is no simple answer other than: “I don’t like it” … but of course if I don’t like something I want to explain why. Swearing is easy without any constructive criticism or solution suggestions.It’s not the point that I don’t like SA in general. I’m just missing a LOT.
I’m not even against new technologies. Otherwize we would be still riding horses… -
@TELE-HO we were in a short discussion two(?) weeks ago regarding some german speaking 2nd hand market groups on facebook. You might remember.
I guess we share the same opinion.
I just wanted to inform about the poll I was invited to. It wasn’t only a “do you like it? - OK” question.
It was a rather extensive form to check the most important usecases, the preferred interface (web or app). In my eyes it was the poll you asked for this morning. And I wonder that not every MC user was invited to reply to the questions -
@radlwadl
yes I remember that discussion… only 2 days later I saw an Ambit3 Peak Sapphire sold for 72,- CHF (mint condition!)… while the 2nd hand prices last summer were around 250,- CHF… this just as a side comment.no, regrettably I did not receive this poll… maybe they don’t roll it out all at once?
Let’s see. -
@Jouko-from-Suunto said in Ambit2 - spell it out for me...:
@pgrey The watch settings are also missing for the later patch of devices and I agree we should have them. They are requested a lot also from our internal testers and our choice of implementing something else first has been questioned a lot. My bet is that the business has reasons for their priority decisions, some may be related to a new watch some to other things I do not understand or know either. We have had some bad luck with especially Trainer quality and it has cost us dearly and we are quite tight on the finance, so the mobile teams are really a bit too small for all what we would need to do, so we have tough decisions still to make on the priority order and what comes first etc. I think the world is changing fast on this area and we need to be sharp and do our best to stay in the game. Garmin is the Goliath and we are smaller that the stone thrown at him. To my eye Polar has the exact same issues with their new platform that we did when Spartan came. Let’s see, I hope our customers will help us to do the right choices.
Jouko, despite the world is changing fast I think Suunto has it’s own customers who do not care about silly stuff like colour touch screens, watch payments, music player e.t.c. Leave that to Garmin and go back to your roots. Simple, reliable, sturdy watch that one can rely on and you will always and your market share is secured and will be growing - slowly but growing. There are lot’s of trail runners, mountaineers, hikers, paragliders I know that love their Ambit watches. Very few want to upgrade to Spartan e.t.c. If I were you I would keep improving these reliable watches and keep selling them for next decade or so. IMHO Spartan was a very bad step.
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@petmic
I would wish an Ambit4 Peak Sapphire for my next birthday
Totally agree and support your comment!
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We do have a separate insight team having NPS surveys and what not to collect user needs and feedback. This forum is just one source and planned originally to be used for the application beta phase. We decided to not kill this when the closed beta ended and I think this forum is still on it’s way to be nice tool for us and our users.
In my eyes one issue we see here is that we are quite slow on showing any changes that comes from the feedback we get. having the feedback to show in the end product is not as easy as one may think. I come from technical background like coding and Test Automation CI etc and it has been quite big eye opener to work with the marketing and other stakeholders to see how little I understand about those areas and reasoning behind product decisions…
What comes to market shares, my understanding is that Suunto has never been big, even it has been in top3 with Garmin and Polar. Ambit was our hit product and one could say it was first of a kind. I still adore my Ambit3 in races and my runs but S9 has replaced it as daily watch and casual activity tracker. But atm is lacks some Outdoor features I’d like to have in my hikes, mainly POI related stuff. And I come from Finland where the Suunto brand knowledge is the best in the world.
I share the worry about Ambit/Traverse users destiny and can assure they are not forgotten and I am personally fighting to get full support in Suunto app since Movescount is not improved anymore. This is not only because I’ve started my Suunto career with Ambit2 testing about 7 years ago. It’s because I believe it deserves and needs the supports as the devices are still great for years to come,
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@Jouko-from-Suunto
You said it all !!!
Thanks
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@Jouko-from-Suunto Thanks for your post here Jouko!
I also think this forum here is a great place and tool for Suunto and us users.
And I hope it will stay, to provide help for any new and existing user. I think we are on a very good way here with the development of this forum, many new users and proud owners of Suunto watches can find help here very easily and everyone can share valuable knowledge here.
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@Jouko-from-Suunto Thanks!
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@Jouko-from-Suunto thanks for the details.
I too love my Ambit 3, i actually prefer to race with the Ambit rather than my Spartan, its the simplicity that makes it great.
I would love to migrate to the 9 but sadly this whole situation with the lack of web interface has done for that at the moment, how i can create / manage various routes on a tiny mobile phone is well… beyond me.
I have played about with other websites but the effort / time required to sort this is just far too great for me, the simplicity of setting a route / POI in MC then just appearing in the watch was a very BIG+ now sadly I feel Suunto’s time is passing us by… unless something happens pretty soon…NO Ambit support / NO web interface = NO way forward.
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@paul870 said in Ambit2 - spell it out for me...:
@Jouko-from-Suunto thanks for the details.
I too love my Ambit 3, i actually prefer to race with the Ambit rather than my Spartan, its the simplicity that makes it great.
I would love to migrate to the 9 but sadly this whole situation with the lack of web interface has done for that at the moment, how i can create / manage various routes on a tiny mobile phone is well… beyond me.
I have played about with other websites but the effort / time required to sort this is just far too great for me, the simplicity of setting a route / POI in MC then just appearing in the watch was a very BIG+ now sadly I feel Suunto’s time is passing us by… unless something happens pretty soon…NO Ambit support / NO web interface = NO way forward.
Pretty much my thoughs too… Such a shame a great device will be ruined by the very company that brought them to being…
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@lohtse I don’t own an Ambit, I made the jump from owning a T6D combined with a GPS Trail Pod for years to the Suunto Spartan Sport. But I totally understand what you are saying here and your frustration. I really Suunto will address that in the May update.
