Connected GPS Pace and Distance is Inaccurate

[DanielMena9]

Went on a run today with my Charge 2 on one wrist and Charge HR on my other wrist. Also had RunKeeper to measure my distance. I started my run with about the same number of steps on both FIT devices. 

After the run, my Charge HR had almost 2K more steps than my Charge 2. In addition, my GPS map on FitBit matched my Runkeeper map which is about a 3.5 mile run BUT FitBit pegged the same route as 1.73 miles >.> 

Why doesn't this device work as advertised? I really like the design and feel of Charge 2 but if it can't do its job accurately, all is for not and I will be shorting FIT as it appears to be a widespread issue (I have maps and photos if someone from FIT wants the data).

Moderator Edit: Edited thread title.

[Colinm39]

@Glennbest@KobaltoI have just confirmed that the Blaze replicates your findings with Connected GPS. I knew the East/West route would have increased distance because it showed my walking pace on the Blaze, at a 23% increase in pace that I have never walked,  and only 20 seconds into the walk. That is 23% faster than the North/South route. It maintained that average for the 13 minutes duration.

The final analysis showed the Blaze as 0.34m/second increase in distance on the East/West route.. Also the step count, comparing my Fitbit One and the Blaze, and in both cases the Blaze was slightly less in steps with an average of - 0.8% variation.  I always use the One for comparisons for steps because over the years I have it extremely accurate.

I'm about 400m line of sight from a Telstra 4GX tower using the Sony Android V7.  The walking routes were symmetrical and no dropouts, just housing, low vegetation and clear evening sky. The exercise function locates the phone within seconds and all of the signal strength bars on the phone were full @ 4G

This Sony Xperia XP has never failed me on all of my Fitbits and the Moderators are aware of this and it isn't on their comparability list.

Have a great day everyone from OZ.

[hawkeye1952]

We all know that the connect gps on the charge 2 is worthless. We also know that the lastest update in which they claim to solve the problem. It failed badly. My guess is that the next release will include a watch with a built in gps. It clear that they are not going to addresss the problem. So they best we can do. Is my worth of mouth tell people do to buy this product. With sales declincing and stock price faling. They are either going to wake up and address these problems or they will be out of business soon.

I have alread told people that I do not recommend this product.

[Rich_Laue]

As for the connected GPS and my S5, as long as i have enough free memory and not much rynning in the back ground, nite the Ditbit app doesnt need to be running, i get acurate maps.

I have the stride tuned in so my milage is good

[Glennbest]

Hi Colin,

That pretty much confirms all charge 2's sold in Australia don't work properly! Where is consumer affairs?

[RogueThetan]

Completely agree, unfortunately. Maybe if they spent more money on the product and less on advertising, this would not be the case.

[Kobalto]

Hi everyone,

Reading the previous posts, I'm starting to think that the connected GPS problem is related to the southern hemisphere. I bought my Charge 2 in the US, so its not a problem of the Charge 2s being sold inside or outside the US. But I've been using it in the southamerica, where it is innacurate. That would explain why Connected GPS is working Ok for bobby2478 and others in the US, but not for Glennbest, Colin or me in Australia/Chile.

I made this graph with three different runs over the same rute, but in different days and at different speeds, showing the error of the Connected GPS in calculating the pace. As you can see, the errors are very simmilar between them. I think this shows that the error is not random, so its not caused  by bad GPS signal, bluetooth/connection with the phone, or by the Charge 2 using the stride length, because those errors would show a different pattern on each run. I would believe this shows that there is a sistematic error in how coordinates are being interpreted. I'm almost certain that it is a problem with longitude coordinates.

In a bit more than a month I'll go to Japan, so I'll be able to test is my Charge 2 works there, but I'd really expect that Fitbit corrects this issue before that.     

[hippiechickmom]

Mine does not work at all and I'm in the US...like I ran eight miles and it said ten...really sad about it

Sent from my iPhone

[kradcliffe]

Both myself and my wife have Charge 2 devices synced to our phones. She has a Galaxy S7 edge and I have the Galaxy Note 4. We both start the "walk" at the same time and end at the same time.

When we go on an identical walk we get completely different distances recorded. Hers is always less than my reading despite walking together.

Surely the GPS should feed back an accurate distance for both devices or am I missing something obvious here?

[RogueThetan]

I'm in the US and it DEFINITELY is not working for me.

[hawkeye1952]

I live in Nebraska and it does not work for me either

[Glennbest]

Wow Fitbit has an even bigger problem than I thought.

Anyone live in San Fran who can go knock on Fitbit's door?

[hippiechickmom]

I live in Colorado and it's the same ...totally inaccurate:(

Sent from my iPhone

[Annabel_b]

I don't understand how Fitbit can still be selling the Charge 2, knowing that it is faulty 😞

[Kobalto]

Thanks all for your feedback on the GPS Connected inaccurate in the US. So I wonder why this is marked "solved"???

[Colinm39]

@Kobalto On the 17th October 2016 the solution is for the firmware upgrade and not about the issues we are experiencing.

The moderators need to reverse that.

[Annabel_b]

I received an email from Fitbit Support today as follows:

Hello Annabel,

Thanks for your reply and for your efforts in sending us the screenshots.

We would like to let you know that our engineers are aware of the problem and are working to resolve it as quickly as possible. 

We're sorry for any inconvenience it's caused. We appreciate your patience and look forward to getting you back on track. 

Please let us know if there's anything we may do to assist you in the meantime.


Sincerely,

Boots and the Fitbit Team

[Annabel_b]

I suggest that as many people as possible report this problem via email to the Fitbit Support team. A high number of support cases about this problem may convince Fitbit Support to increase the priority of working to find a solution. If no one reports this via the Support page http://help.fitbit.com/?l=en_US&cu=1&fs=ContactUs, Fitbit won't see it as a problem.

[kradcliffe]

I contacted support via Twitter about this. They told me to make sure the fitbits are on the latest FW (which they are) and to make sure there is a good Bluetooth connection to the phone (which there is).

I let them know this and now they are ignoring me. My first impression of this product was good but I'm beginning to lose confidence now. The screenshots below are exactly the same walk with two completely different distances. Why should two identical trackers be so different?

We thankfully have a large garden and a long tape measure so recalculated our stride lengths and input the new figures. Interestingly if I took my wife's distance reading then calculated the difference between my stride length and hers then multiplied it up the distances almost matched, so it appears the issue here could be users not entering an accurate stride length, however I would have thought the GPS would work out the distance?

Will let everyone know if it makes a difference on our walk tomorrow.

[hawkeye1952]

First of all your stride length as nothing to do with GPS.

Here is where the problem lay's

A connected GPS is a GPS that send and receives a signal.This signal comes from your cell phone tower not the satellites.

Connected – A connected GPS receiver uses its built-in connectivity (either GSM/GPRS or CDMA – GPRS is preferred and is more suitable for live tracking) to connect to a wireless provider (e.g. Sprint). This allows it to communicate information such as its location, altitude or speed to other devices or a web browser application, such as this program. An example of this is Telogis Fleet, which helps fleet owners manage multiple GPS receivers (which could be in cars, trucks, vans or even attached to people). also known as A-GPS

Disconnected – A GPS device that is disconnected only receives signals from the free GPS satellite network, or constellation as it’s called. Information such as current location, speed, altitude and time is only available to the user of the GPS device. Unlike a connected GPS receiver it cannot send or transmit data to another device. The units are often cheaper because they do not have any built-in connectivity.

this is what I found also

To use connected GPS during an exercise you must start the exercise in the fitbit app. Starting it on the tracker does not activate the phone, it just records all tracker related activity during the exercise and then syncs it afterwards.

What fitbit did not do correctly. Was to fully explain how to use it.

[TurtleSpeed]

> A connected GPS receiver uses its built-in connectivity (either GSM/GPRS or CDMA – GPRS is preferred and is more suitable for live tracking) to connect to a wireless provider (e.g. Sprint).

This may be true but that's not what I am seeing in the FitBit app. The key point is the fact that the map and the tracked route of my walk / run are all *correct* from what I see in the FitBit app. The only thing that is *not correct* is the distance (and potentially other stats that are based on the distance). Since the logged route is correctly shown on the map, I don't understand why the distance is wrong. I can easily check the distance by using Google Maps. As long as the route is correct, the distance should be correct - this is not the case with Connected GPS.

> What fitbit did not do correctly. Was to fully explain how to use it.

Perhaps but I am inclined to disagree unless someone can tell me why the distance is wrong while the logged route is correct.