Charge 2 GPS Inaccurate distance

[SunsetRunner]

This has been discussed here  but the thread has been closed I am still having issues.

Compared to Strava and some other apps that I have been checking Fitbit against, Fitbit is consistently showing that I have traveled a shorter distance than what I actually have.  It is out by about 250 meters for 6km.  This is a big margin of error.

I believe that I have found the cause of the issue.  Fitbit app does not log from the centre of your location but rather to the outside of the GPS accuracy circle.  This means that if you have run that has a lot of twists and turns the overall run will show as a shorter distance.

From the following images you can see that the trace line (recorded route) never actually touches where I am.  So in this example when I turn this 90 corner, Fitbit records it as a smooth curve.

Now the turn

trace has never actually caught up with my location.

Most of the turn is smoothed out

Add all of these up throughout a run an it leads to a massive margin of error.

All of the other apps that I use do not have this issue.  Its as if Fitbit does not use a high enough sample rate to record position.

Moderator Edit: Updated Subject For Clarity.

[jordan.van.dyk]

Interesting... Nice find! If it is indeed true hopefully we can get some resolution. I am also still having issues, 2.65 was fine anything after that is terrible. Versions 2.66 and 2.67 were by far the worst. 2.67.1 and 2.68 still have issues. For my 5k's I'm about 250-350m off similar to you yet... strava has them at 5k every time. It's also strange because if i let fitbit upload to strava and use strava's correct gps distance feature, it always comes out to 5k, which means the raw gps data is probably fine but the way the fitbit is using it is off.

[SunsetRunner]

Bumping this.

[KSS1]

The problem with inaccurate distance is back! We had this prior to the 2.67 release and it now seems to be back. The map in the app seems to be correct but the distance is off. I've tried the same route I normally do. MapMyRun shows the correct distance. I also have started to get the 'press button to dismiss' message again.

Disappointed.

[RobertoME]

Hi @KSS1, thank you for visiting the Fitbit Community and for bringing this issue to my attention. There are no report there is a bug affecting the GPS feature after the new update. Nonetheless I'm going to keep an eye on this in case is a returning bug.

In the meantime, I recommend to do these steps, give that you have recently updated the app: log out from your Fitbit app and go to your phone settings. Access to the App manager option and look for the Fitbit app in your downloaded apps list. Once you are there, clear the app cache and data and proceed to "Force Stop" the app. Finish the workaround by restarting your phone. When your phone has initialized, go back to your app and try again.

See you later and let me know if the issue continues.

[jordan.van.dyk]

@RobertoMEso it's a known or unknown issue? there have been reports of this since 2.65 a large thread was closed after 2.67.1 as resolved despite lots of others saying it still was not working. Here are two threads that I quickly dug up (having checked every so often I know there are more).
https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Charge-2/Inaccurate-distance-with-Charge-2/m-p/2650508#M152113
https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Android-App/Charge-2-GPS-Inaccurate-Recorded-route-to-short/m-p/2634...

Note that in one a fitbit moderator says it's known. It's quite annoying when every other app records the same distance, and you can use a service like strava to correct the fitbits uploaded data, but the fitbit app itself still shows short 20-50m on every km.

Since the charge 2 isn't doing any actual calculations ( or shouldn't be...) this is very strange if the location data is coming from the phone it should be the same as other apps. The location api isn't particularly complicated in android.

This was not an issue in 2.65 and I have multiple runs where correcting distance in strava produced nearly identical distance calculations then what fitbit uploaded. Every single run since 2.66 has been off while 2.66 and 2.67 were the worst by far ( some 5k+ runs showing as 2.6k) it's still off (most of my 5ks show as 4.75-4.76k.  today's run was better.. showing 7.95k when it was 8.14k give or take) it's fine to be off by  a tiny bit. But consistently missing 2-300m on runs of 5-8k is pretty ridiculous. 3-5% is a fairly large inaccuracy.

Consider also that many other fitbit users have shown runs that they are extremely confident are a certain distance to find that apps like runkeeper, mapmyrun, strava all record the same distance for it which is +/-10m of what they expected the distance to be, while their charge 2 connected gps is missing 250m or so. What's even stranger is the map produced and the gps data produced is usually correct it's simply the calculation on distance...

Consider this also propagates to create other issues. Such as less correct calorie calculations for cardio activities, incorrect cardio fitness scores, incorrect pacing in the run itself, etc etc.

I think fitbit needs to be consistent in their responses to these issues and transparent on whether this is a known issue and a JIRA has been raised for the developers ( preferably with high priority).

[KiwiJohn51]

Same issue.  Garmin and Strava 36.5 miles.  Charge2 10.68. Time same in all three as is GPS mapping.  2.70

Will attempt the Force Stop suggested. 

[KSS1]

Hi,

I've tried the recommended steps, unfortunately, no joy. Also did a complete uninstall and reinstall.

Tue 17th April - 2.76km

Weds 18th April - 2.75km

After 2.70 update;

Fri 20th April - 2.18km

Mon 23rd April - 2.13km

MapMyRun for the last walk showed 2.76km. The map in the Fitbit app appears to be fine, bit the distance and therefore the pace etc. are off.

Unfortunately, I can't will back the app as I've done in the past to determine whether the issue with the app.

[RobertoME]

Hi there everyone, my apologies for the late response and thank you for your comments in raising the flag regarding the inaccurate distance still is happening with Connected GPS, in comparison to third party apps.

I have merged some thread in to this one, in order to keep track of this issue and your feedback. 

@jordan.van.dyk thank you for bringing to my attention, other moderator mentioned this is an ongoing issue. You are correct, and my apologies if this create some sort of confusion.

At the time I mentioned there were no reports of this issue in the latest release of the Fitbit app. I did not wanted to give you the impression this was a resolved issue. In our dedicated post about this issue, we found out that in one of the updates, despite it was not release a fix; the GPS improved and later on we received word the app was working, reason why this shows as resolved. You can find the update in the link mentioned before by @SunsetRunner here: Charge 2 GPS distance inaccuracy after 2.66 - RESOLVED w/ 2.67.1 

Now, as It was said, this is a know issue and we are working to find the root that is causing this discrepancy. I can understand this is an inconvenience to track your daily exercise.

In the meantime, I recommend for those who haven't tried this, to give it a try to the steps of my previous post. If the issue persists and the distance is inaccurate, refer to our help article: Why isn't GPS working on my Fitbit device?

Let me know any change in its behavior. If I got more details I will let you know.

[BamIAm]

Biggest improvement I've seen for connected GPS is disabling wifi and wifi / bluetooth scanning on my phone.  Connection between my Versa (and Blaze) stays solid then.

If it drops, I think Fitbit reverts to step counting / pace length until the connection is re-established. 

[jordan.van.dyk]

@RobertoME@BamIAm

I'll also try both of these. @BamIAm you turn off wifi AND wifi scanning? interesting, i'll try that i'm not sure why that would matter unless the fitbit is missing things because scanning is spamming the connections? I guess wifi and bluetooth share identical bands 2.4 - 2.5ish ghz so that may be an option.

I did make the assumption that it reverted to step and and pace counting. Which I thought was a strange decision I feel it should be less aggressive about this, what is more strange to me is the 'squiggles' that appear when this does happen

[BamIAm]

My phone has issues with location: high accuracy.  It got better using location: device only, disabling both bluetooth and wifi scanning, and turning off wifi completely.

I walk next to a busy road, and my theory is that vehicle bluetooth and wifi hotspots interfere with my phone's GPS mapping.  Relying on GPS only seems to fix this.  Before I got to this point I would have jagged maps too.  It's a lot more reliable now.

I had a brief GPS disconnect yesterday with my Versa and sure enough, I had forgotten to turn off wifi on the phone.  Toggled it off, and the rest of the walk went fine.  Was .01 mile shorter than normal, which I attribute to the break.  Step count was higher too, which I attribute to the switch between GPS and step count / stride. 

[jordan.van.dyk]

Hmm that's possible I run under bridges that have a lot of cars. I'll definitely try this out if this is true. I might look into seeing why in the future I haven't used the location api stuff much perhaps there is a way to rely more heavily on gps vs networks it's found.

[MelleKing]

Today did another run.

charge2 firmware 22.22.55.2

fitbit app 2.67

myLaps tracked 6185 meters.

Fitbit charge2 tracked 5590 meters

difference of 595 meters is more than 10%..

this run the charge2 could not sync with the android device during start, fitbit app does not show a map for the run.

still fitbit completely useless for tracking runs....

[jordan.van.dyk]

Im goin to try @BamIAm's suggestion tomorrow and report back if that helps.  Yesterday I used the mobile run portion of the fitbit app and strava at same time and they were much closer but still not perfect

[RobertoME]

Hello everyone and thank you for keep sharing your updates and experiences with this issue. My apologies for the late response.

Recently was released a new version of the Fitbit app that improves the stability of the app in general. If you haven't installed this new version, give it a try. For more details please refer to this post here.

See you later and I'll be reviewing this if something new comes up.

[Patyjs]

I'm using version 2.72.1. Today's run was 5.75K according to my Charge 2, but my phone GPS recorded the distance as 8.05K!!

The distance on the same run always varies a little with the device, showing anywhere between 5.4K and 5.8K but I put this down to variations in my stride.

[MelleKing]

It looks like GPS information is not used at all, only for drawing the map
and calculated distance is based on stride length.

Until the fitbit app with GPS, takes precedence over the wrist charge 2
steps guessed distance, I do not see how fitbit is going to fix this issue.

The fitbit app with GPS should be in full control of the distance
calculation. Stride length is to be dropped for distance calculation.

The sooner the development team picks this user story the better.

[SunsetRunner]

I think you are correct.  Since the last update running has been a lot more accurate for me, only out by a few hundred meters for 5k.  However when cycling it is massively incorrect.  Fitbit showed 11.27km but the actual cycle ride was around 20k.  This would, to me at least, confirm that it is using the stride length and not using the phones gps for measuring. 

[NBrouss]

I am having this issue as well so I'd like to bring the thread up again. I downloaded the most recent update on 8/16/19 and today I did a run around a course that I know is 3.1 miles but today it only registered 2.7 miles. Nearly half a mile difference is a big one and it will prove to be problematic as I train for a half marathon in the spring. Where do we stand on this issue?