Bye bye Garmin, hello Polar (from Finland)

As an addition: tech from American companies should be replaced. You can't trust it. Android (as it exists in the Google ecosystem) is spyware, same with iOS. If you can't replace those operating systems with your own (which is usually possible but complicated) then it's really not a good idea to have them in your home.

Yeah my response to all the news telling me that "cost will be passed on to consumers" is to just not be a consumer, especially where I don't have to be. "consuming" implies that you're destroying the item in the process, and mostly we end up doing exactly that. It's understandable for food, but vehicles? appliances? technology? We need to get way better about not just finding ways to sustain, repair and reuse older things, but also we need to be holding companies to account when they make that difficult (and they do!)

Right to repair is a step in the right direction, but we also need the right to easily repair, we need the right to have items that are not designed to fail in the first place, that do not have value engineered weak points and planned obsolescence and this culture of making things so cheap they are disposable. We are encouraged to do this by companies that do not have our best interests at heart, only their own profits. And even if we like it this way, we need to stop, it's unhealthy for us, for the planet, and for the future.

Buy second hand. Back market is a good source, or now vinted have electronics too and you can pay a small fee to have items verified before they're sent to you, so you can trust they're as described.

Yeah. I've seen so many posts of people trying to ditch their phones or just electronics in general to buy a new, EUROPEAN product. There are better ways to spend money and do some good.

Oh yes definitely!

Exactly, if you already have American stuff that doesn't depend on them making still money on it right now, no need to replace it ASAP. Buy when it breaks or need to change, don't buy American again.

I just posted about it: https://lemmy.world/post/26730824

https://believeintherun.com/gps-run-tracking-privacy-policies/

Polar is based in the EU, which has the strictest privacy laws in the world under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). However, this only applies to data subjects within the EU, so if you’re using a device in the United States, you’re not covered by the GDPR (even if you’re a European citizen). The likely reason Joe Rogan received an updated notice agreement was because he was within the EU borders at the time. Companies based within the United States also must comply with GDPR data protection when gathering data from European data subjects.

Does Polar sell your data? No. According to Polar, “the data is used only to offer you the service in question, nothing else. Polar does not disclose, give or sell your data to anyone unless [they] are required to do so pursuant to a mandatory provision of law. [They] may use some of the data in research and development work to improve [their] services, but for such purposes data is cleared from identifiers to the maximum amount possible.”

According to their policy, data is transferred outside your country of origin because they need the data to give you accurate training metrics and recommendations. All their servers are based in Finland, Ireland, and Sweden, so your information only goes to those servers, all under the EU/EEA umbrella. When transferred, “Your data will not be disclosed or given to any third parties; it is still under Polar’s control and under your ownership.

Now, data may be transferred to Polar’s subcontractors that carry out tasks related to Polar, though it doesn’t say who those contractors are or where they are located.

The good news is that you have a lot of rights under their policy, including access to the personal information they have on you, the right to object to the handling of personal data, and the right to refuse profiling and automated decision-making. There are far more rights granted by Polar than other companies.

According to wikipedia:

Headquarters

• Olathe, Kansas, U.S (operations)
• Schaffhausen, Switzerland (legal domicile)

I'm not really sure if that fully counts as EU/European 🤷

Not op, but as a long term polar user...

Their software is OK. I wouldn't call it top tier. What I would call top-tier is their device APIs - I have a polar h10 for example, which I made my own HR monitoring app for in a matter of hours.

The big difference, IMO, is polar is very friendly to 3rd party apps and devices first and foremost, while Garmin I personally feel is Garmin first, then 3rd party friendly. Just my opinion.

So with that, since its so easy to use other tools with them, you dont need to import to polar software. That said, polar works with tcx and gpx which can be converted to .fit easily, couldn't tell you on the other way around.

Hope this helps answer

Suunto is owned by Chinese company Liesheng. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suunto

Sadly not anymore. Owned by the chinese since 2022

Polar is not supported by Gadgetbridge (yet?), you can find the supported devices here.

Normally I would advice Bangle.js, but it is not great for swimming.

Garmin Pay supports only american cards anyway. There's much more options for contactless European payments using your phone and bank apps.

I can't speak to their current products, but my M400 is still going strong after 10 years of daily use. My wife's Garmin stopped holding charge after 2 years.

Polar's app leaves something to be desired, though.

OPs particular watch (and many others, Garmin included) also supports Galileo, Glonass and Qzss. Same goes for smartphones. The term "GPS" these days is used for all kinds of satellite based positioning, not exclusively the American one.

And I think there's nothing wrong with a little spite in these times. I'd rather my money go to an european company than to an american one, even though some of that money goes to asia further down the supply chain (which it does for almost any electronics, no matter where the company is based)

But I agree your comment about EU production!