HR not accurate when tracking a exercise with phone

[SHaase]

The GPS in my Ionic is so unreliable/inaccurate that I stopped using my Ionic to track my exercises (e.g. walking).  Instead, I switched to using the FitBit app on my phone which works flawlessly, every time.  So, my routine for going on a walk is now:

1. Open FitBit app on phone
2. Tap the + on the Exercise button
3. Click the arrow to start tracking
4. Go on my walk
5. At the end of my walk, hit Pause & Finish on my phone

With this routine, I get an accurate map of my walk recorded, and my Ionic happily tracks my steps.  All is good.  Well, almost. 

One problem with this is that when I use my phone to start/stop an exercise, it doesn't seem to communicate this to the Ionic so the Ionic does not turn on the feature where it accurately tracks your heart rate during an exercise. 

As a result of this, if I look at my walk in the FitBit app and switch to the Heart Zones tab, the entire path is grayed out and there's a "Not enough heart rate data available" textbox at the bottom.  So, this means I can't look back to see what my heart rate looked like at various parts during my walk, which sucks. 

If I use my Ionic to start/stop the exercise, I do get the heart rate info but I almost never get any GPS data at all so there's usually no map available or the map is simply incomplete/wrong - which also makes looking at the data useless.  I've tried using both the phone and the Ionic to start/stop a walk, hoping that the heart rate data from the Ionic would merge with the GPS data from the phone, but that doesn't work.

So, my feature request is for the FitBit app on the phone to signal the Ionic when you start tracking an exercise on the phone app so the Ionic can enable the enhanced heart rate monitoring.

Granted, none of this would be needed if the GPS on the Ionic simply worked reliably, but I've tried just about everything there and have basically given up on it at this point.  

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[SilviaFitbit]

@SHaase Hey there. Thank you for taking the time to share what you've been experiencing with your Ionic while tracking a exercise. 

I see where your disappointment is coming from, I'll be happy to help you sorting this out. 

When tracking an activity with your phone your Fitbit Ionic won't connect to it because it has built-in GPS. If it didn't have it, then you could connect it to your app and get a workout intensity map that shows your pace, distance, and heart-rate zones. 

Since you've tried the recommended troubleshooting for the Ionic GPS accuracy, I could create a case with our Support team and they will continue assisting through email and provide you with the appropriate options. 

Let me know if you'd like me to create a case for you. Looking forward to hearing back from you. 

[SHaase]

I think are you misinterpreting my feature request (or I'm misinterpreting your reply :)).  My request is to have the Fitbit phone app tell the Ionic that an exercise has started.  Once the Ionic receives the signal that an exercise has started, it can start its enhanced heart rate scanning.  When the exercise is stopped on the Fitbit app on the phone, it would send the stop signal to the Ionic - and the Ionic could stop its enhanced heart rate scanning.  The Ionic could upload the heart rate data during the normal sync process and since it has the timestamps for when the exercise start/stopped, that data could be merged with the GPS data from the phone to produce a more complete exercise data set.

In any case, if this is not something that is doable then it would be nice to open a case to try to address the inaccurate/mostly non-functional GPS on the Ionic.  At this point it's rare that I can get a GPS signal at all from my Ionic.  I think it's been at least 2 months since it's worked at all, and it was high sporadic for the ~4 months previous to that (which is why I stopped using it and switched to using the Fitbit app on my phone).