Is it possible to manually add training sessions to Polar Flow? I'd like to add historical training sessions that were captured before I had the v800 in order to have a complete picture of my triathlon training.

Thanks, Chris I'll fill out everything tomorrow and send it back. Once again GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE!

Hello Chris,

Many thanks for sharing this info with us via Ray.
It is very important that the early adopter we are knows what's cooking. It really creates a win/win and trust relationship with your customer base.

I already commented on DCRainmaker, but I did not see any mention related to Flow interface/user experience improvement (search module, exercise name, sport profile custom color, add lap marker for post analysis improvement, more reporting capabilities (elevation, sleep time, ...))
From FW side I don't see any short term willingness to improve altibarometer based feature list, such as VAM.

When it comes to historical data porting to flow, we clearly want ALL.
If the bottleneck is time required to import the data, 3 comments:
1. Indicate the estimated import duration to end user
2. Let user select which year range to import
3. If you import your historical data in several steps (y-1, then y-2, ...) make a detection of what was already imported or detection of duplicates to avoid issues
last comment is wrt to data loss at import. There is currently not one to one match between PPT5 data and Flow data (exercise name, weather condition, exercise rating, sickness, .... all those exists in PPT5 but will not have a end point in Flow).
>> We absolutely need exercise name to be implemented and available in Flow before migration!! This data cannot be loss. I cannot imagine scrolling years of data without search module and no indication on what my exercise correspond to (and do not want to open each sessions until I find back the race I did 3 years back)

if you have some time please find below some post I did on Polar forums with some proposal to improve current Flow version.

http://forum.polar.fi/showthread.php?t=28958
http://forum.polar.fi/showthread.php?t=29019
http://forum.polar.fi/showthread.php?t=28857
http://forum.polar.fi/showthread.php?t=28841

Many thanks, and keep up the great work you are doing in this forum to bridge with your customer base.

Hello Chris@polar,
A couple of days ago I bought the Polar V800 which is perfect for me. Everything works as it should and I am very happy with it. But there is one very important thing what makes me want to return it.
I red that it should be able to connect to iPhone & Android phones, but currently Í am not able to connect my V800 with my Android Phone (HTC One with Android 4.4.3) so I have to connect the V800 to my computer everyday (a couple of times a day) if I want to synchronize and see my activity. Which is not a problem, but it will also Charge my battery everytime I connect the V800 to my computer which is not so good for the battery I guess as it is Always on 99% orso. This way the battery will lcharge everytime I connmect it to my computer while it doesn't need to and always stay Almost full.
Is there an alternative or can you help me to avoid this charging everytime I connect ?
Also another thing which is related but less important. I don't understand why (or how this works) when I synchronize all data to the Flow website it is not in my Flow app when I login on the Flow App on my Android Phone. Am I doing something wrong or is this just not possible?
If these options are in the future release can you please tell me when this is, because it might be too late for me because the battery of my Phone might be dead by then if I dont return it.
Kind regards & Thanks in advance

I seem to have a problem which has caught me out several times now and have found nothing documented to explain the behaviour....

I now attend a weekly 5k Parkrun and several minutes before the start I set the watch up with a pace guide - either by entering directly into the watch or through a favourite already downloaded to it. I start the watch several minutes ahead of race time because I want to ensure a solid GPS lock before setting off and daren't take the risk that the watch takes too long gaining a fix. Unfortunately the pace function never works. I get a zero for the time difference and a zero for remaining km.

So a couple of times this week I have tried setting a pace just before going for a casual walk. This time everything worked as expected.on both occasions. Of course I hardly need a working pace function just to take the dog for her walk. So why does it work every time for the walk and never for the run? I can only surmise that the watch gets bored of waiting for me to start the run, so even though I have GPS OK displayed and my heart rate showing it appears that the GPS has given up waiting for me to start my run and just silently vanishes. Is this a known feature, documented somewhere, or a bug? I think it's a bug. Can someone please confirm? Thanks.

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Getting fitter, not fatter

The V800 is actually not compatible with Android just yet - that's planned for December (noted above in the update timeline). So far we've only advertised it as iOS compatible. This also explains the Flow not "seeing" the data you have downloaded via USB. The app just isn't updated yet with V800 (and it's data) support. Hope this helps!

This is actually the first I'm seeing anything like this (and also personally use the feature regularly). I'd suggest maybe emailing our support team @ http://www.polar.com/us-en/support - It does eventually "time out" of pretraining mode, but it will switch the display back to home. Do you see this happen, then go back into pre-training direct maybe, rather than go into Favorites > Race Pace first?

The watch does not revert to the time screen. It continues showing the "ready" screen with HR and GPS OK displayed. All I need to do is to hit the red button once more to start recording, but the pace feature simply does nothing.

Today, having set the watch to find the GPS I just left it running, awaiting the time to start the race. GPS was locked and I did hear a beep whilst still stationary, which made me glance at the watch. I might have briefly seen the GPS drop back to a % value, but it instantly returned to OK so I thought nothing more of it and waited for the race start.

Basically I have had the pace function fail three times out of three when waiting for the race start for >5 minutes and it has worked perfectly two times out of two when setting off immediately after GPS lock.

I just checked the run details for today and the GPS tracked perfectly throughout and speed/distance/HR all look correct. It is only the pace function which does not work on the watch display, This is a bit disappointing when the pace was the single most important metric I wanted to monitor today.

EDIT : p.s. feedback sent to Polar as suggested.

p.p.s. I raised the same issue on the Polar Forums and someone has replied to confirm a similar issue as well; - http://forum.polar.fi/showthread.php?t=29295

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Getting fitter, not fatter

Hello Again Chris,
Thanks for your quick answer. I really appreciate it, but it is very dissapointing for a top 3 on the priority list :-( (I am currently reading this forum and saw this come across earlier).
1) Also I just red that you replied on the same question in June/July that it will be October. Are they postponing it everytime?
2) What about the charging part?
It isn't possible to disable charging during connection or isn't it damaging the battery when you load it a couple of times a day for a while (though the battery is almost full)?
What is your advise in this?

Sorry, If you found me rude, but I don't want to buy an iPhone to get what I want :-(.
Thanks again and sorry if I offended you!
Kind regards,
Rene

Hi Chris,

Question: I read somewhere (either Polar's own literature or perhaps DC Rainmaker) that the running index on the V800 takes elevation profiles/gradients into account, can you confirm this is true and elaborate a bit?

The reason I ask is that I mostly run in hilly terrain, and even if I run hard and fast I get much lower running index scores than if I run on something flatter with a similar effort. Obviously the heart rate is lower, and the speed is faster but this should be offset against the gradient and end up with a similar score as I understand it?

This would be really useful for me, as I tend to train a lot in hills/forests (I don't have much choice where I live) but I'm mostly training for races which will be almost dead flat, so the running index is one way I can keep an eye on what sort of range I can aim for on race day.

A bug has been mentioned on the Polar site which I have now tried and can confirm. When using the Triathlon profile, if you go into Pre Training mode (press red button), unless you start the Triathlon within 4-5 minutes, the pre training (Triathlon) changes to Pre-training "Swimming" No rational reason but this is quite dodgy
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Haha, funny how the group of people in this thread and on the polar forum seems to converge...

This is a link to that bug.

It doesn't seem like its so bad at first glance, but the result is that your triathlon race experience with the V800 is completely messed up and the post race analysis is not happening at all. Furthermore, the confusion in T1 or when starting the bike will probably get people all confused pressing around at buttons potentially distracting them from the actual race (i.e. not bumping into other people/obstacles...)

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if you can read this
YOU'RE DRAFTING!

This appears to have similarities with a bug I've reported. For a run with pace target set, if you delay starting the run until some minutes after GPS lock is achieved then the watch will not report pace data. It will, however, still track your path and HR and display most metrics apart from pace. and remaining distance on the pace screen.

It seems the watch gets confused and malfunctions if you don't start your sport quickly enough.

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Getting fitter, not fatter

There must be some kind of timeout/reset going on because this also affects "favourites". The other day, I selected a favourite route that I had "starred" previously, but then I was a bit tardy leaving, could have been 5 to 10 minutes. When I then started running everything worked fine except I didn't have the map screen as one of the views, so it had "forgotten" that it was supposed to be tracking a favourite.

Otherwise that feature works fine - normally I leave within a minute or so of selecting it so this is the first time I've noticed it. In future I will not "prepare" the watch until just before starting - which is a shame, because Iike to make sure I have a gps lock as early as possible, and also keep an eye on my heart rate in the minutes leading up to starting.

Hi Chris. I was just trying to use navigational capabilities of the watch. I know that own track creation is a lot but do you thing a simple POI entry in Flow would be possible in the near future?
I'm missing a simple compass view (arrow to the north) too.
What do you think?

Chris, I have heard nothing back from Polar support and now there are other reports of malfunction if the time between entering pre-training mode and starting training is in the order of 5 minutes or more. This needs a proper response and a fix from Polar. Can you chase please, as official channels are plainly ignoring the problem.

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Getting fitter, not fatter

A way to set up a phased training target with different pace instead of heart rate zone for different phases would be nice.

Like this:
Warmup: 2 km @ 6 min/km
Work: 5 km @ 5 min/km
Cooldown 2 km @ 6 min/km

with the watch displaying information about current and average pace during the active phase.

Don't think I disappeared :0) I'm over at Interbike this week!

We're researching the "time out" issue in pre training experienced here and on or forums.

Updates listed above are progressing very nicely! Power is working great in last round of testing.

Unsure if anyone from Polar is reading the Polar forum where bugs sometimes are reported.

One recent one is related to lap pace and automatic laps. The avg lap pace only works for manual laps not automatic laps. Chris, please ask development team to add this to their bug list.

Thanks, Chris. Just an update from today....

Still nothing from Polar, but today I used a pace target on my weekly 5k Parkrun, entering pre-training only a minute or less before the start of the run and this time the pace functions worked exactly as they should. I did secure my first GPS fix minutes earlier, but exited pre-training and re-entered it about a minute before the race start.


I think this pretty much confirms that things go pear shaped if there is too much delay (5 minutes or more?) between entering pre-training mode and starting training for real. I look forward to a response and a fix from Polar, but at least I have a solution to avoiding the problem. Forewarned is forearmed and all that.

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Getting fitter, not fatter

Seems there is a tight time window to start. First, you have to wait a minute or two for the GPS to settle. If you don't, the GPS is going to be off like 20-25m. Then you have to start within 2 minutes so you don't get caught by the bug you mention.
Question: can we get more info on GPS signal quality? Like accuracy in meters? I've seen in in cell phones with sirf chips.

Flow and the V800 don't seem to handle time zone change well. The watch itself adapts well and changes time zone when syncing with my phone. IT seems to confuse Flow though. I'd make a couple of points. First of all, in this day and age, an activity / workout tracker should be able to handle time zones. People travel and the system needs to deal with it. Second, even if there are small goinks that are unavoidable... I returned from Beijing yesterday morning and Flow is still hopelessly confused today.

I can relate to this.. just returned from Germany ... and things are not well.. however i want to report another issue.
i cycle in South Carolina a lot where the roads are "uh hum" .. bumpy.. or rustic... and i do NOT have an auto lap set, but whenever i go over a "bump", the watch seems to think it was a "new" lap.
any one else with these issues?... i definately have, in polar flow.. the lap funktion set, during cycling to "5 km" ... not an auto lap... so why, when i go over a rough patch.. does the watch start a new lap?

It thinks you are tapping it. If you go into setting online you can change the function of a tap some something besides lap or just turn it off completely which is what I did.

Hope this helps.

I haven't seen the "lap" problem and I do most of my cycling on my 'cross bike on fire trails. I just saw that someone else said that it could be the tap function. I haven't changed mine off the default either. I wear my watch on my wrist while cycling. Is yours on your wrist or mounted to the bike? Any settings you want to compare?