Strava

My only guess is Strava does not want to pay license for the ANT+ and BLE libraries.

It probably saves them money on dev costs (which must be pretty low already). It's a data mining app.

The joke about them never adding new features gets better, now they're removing features?

I don't use their app and barely use the site but that's pretty funny.

I write an app that does BLE pairing (PM, HRM, speed, cadence) with no stability issues to report. No libraries needed either.

I don’t have a clue what led them to this.

They're burning VC money, not generating enough income as everyone has told them in no uncertain terms to fuck off putting adverts or other crap in their feed, have found that anonymised aggregated data being sold to cities doesn't fund a pre-IPO lifestyle, don't have anything compelling enough to pay significantly more for, and now they're trying to downsize.

Wouldn't be surprised if they get bought out by someone else in a fire sale in 12-24 months.

Zwift will buy them.

You read it here first folks.

Just got an email from Strava that they will stop supporting Bluetooth and ANT+ device pairing on the App. What on earth? I have never had any issues with recording afecting stability. Just because some people can’t keep their phones with enough memory does not mean the software had any issue.

I read this a few weeks ago but forgot to mention it here. I seem to remember that this only applies to new users and existing users shouldn't be affected.

edit - just read up on the updated. Nope, looks like it'll affect all users...

Why would they send this communication to existing users then. It just does not compute! I recently tried Suunto's app and it was pretty horrible. I have had no reason to buy a separate cycling computer or a watch. Only gripes with Strava app has been the lack of being able to record HR data for gym workouts and playing basketball indoors.

The email makes no sense.

"Pairing sensors crashes the app if you don't use any sensors"

We recently discovered that pairing Bluetooth heart rate monitors and power meters directly with the app is causing Strava to crash for millions of athletes — most of whom don’t even use these kinds of sensors.

The pairing is causes crashes for 'other' users?

ie. pairing from the app churns some api and they can't time it out because it's gotta take x seconds to pair blah blah and this load isn't sustainable on their kit which ends up locking up for other users. I dunno, all I can think of is some kind of timeout or deadlocking problem they can't work a way around, if that is what their email means?

Found this cached version of their original September statement which makes it much clearer than that emailed rubbish

"Supporting Bluetooth devices was causing the app to crash during recording, whether or not a sensor was connected. Disabling this feature significantly improves recording stability for all athletes.

Unlikely pairing causes a problem at the API/server level. There should (but who knows what goblinry lurks there) be no interaction with the servers during the pairing process (maybe after a successful pairing).

My guess is that people who don't have any sensors hit the pairing button because it's not clear that they don't have to, because they don't know any better, and it causes crashes because it's shitly written.

Rather than fix the bugs they're using it as a crap excuse to remove some functionality they don't really want to have to continue to maintain.

I guess they just want people to use a different device (Garmin/TomTom/Fitbit/Suunto/Apple watch/cycle-computer/etc) to deal with the difficult ANT+/BLE stuff and then Strava (the website) just receives the data that is uploaded. The app is then just for people who aren't interested in smart watches/devices and who just want to log a run/cycle, or for people to browse the feed and show off to others.

Ah, right, yeah. So whether or not devices were paired, just having BT enabled would cause crashes. Sounds like they need fresh dev meat.

Unlikely

I know. But their gibberish words could = gibberish code.

It's clearer now and seems they can't code around the issue or don't want to.

I don't understand why it would apply equally to the iOS and Android versions of the app. They already very different feature sets and UI, and presumably codebases. Dropping it on e.g. iOS 13 would make some sort of sense. Dropping it on both platforms makes none.

Garmin Connect has gradually got a lot better than strava in terms of displayed metrics. A lot more useful than strava now without the social media fluff (although they do try).

Their determination to make it something no-one wanted it to be (fb) over something everyone wanted it to be (a solid, feature-rich, fun activity tracker) is frustrating

Having worked in the fitness device space, supporting BLE in a mobile app specifically on Android is a monumental task. Our app team consisted of two developers for iOS and five for Android, plus we were using a specialist Android testing house for £10k a month to extend the range of devices we were testing on.

Even with this, Android users consistently rated the app negatively, much to the annoyance of my management chain.

I can understand why Strava are doing this, but as @Greenbank says, this could be the end of them.

Exactly. My gf's runs, twice a week, never show up in my 'timeline' since they switched to non-linear. Never. I have to look her up using the search function to give her kudos or comment. Every week.

Interestingly I tried the ridewgps app syncing my bluetooth hr monitor the other day, worked good. Android.

I'm affected by Bluetooth phone hr change. Anyone here use Google fit?

Sounds like it might be a suitable alternative that also will update Strava too via linking?

Any other apps worth considering... needs to be free, record HRM and gpx track data (or other format) that can be exported too. #moononastickplease

I've used a janky app called IpBike before for spin sessions, it allows sensors and GPS tracking, I guess just change the activity type when you upload to strava?

I'll look into it, ta!

Fwiw Google fit app doesn't do what it promised.

Wahoo app seems way better than Strava. Loads more features and pairs a BT HRM quickly and you can sync to Strava anyway.