Ionic losing GPS connection during activity

[Robby1870]

I've had my Ionic for a couple of weeks and have completed two runs so far.  Before I started each run I made sure the GPS status said "connected".  At some point during each run GPS lost connection and switched to "connecting" on the run activity screen.  During my second run I noticed this happened about 44 minutes into the run.  I ran another 14 minutes to finish and during that entire time the GPS status never said "connected" again.  By the way my Ionic has the latest FW, OS2.1.

I see lots of threads about GPS never connecting but I haven't seen this issue yet.  

[bmw54]

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@Hebrews12-1 wrote:

I have had this problem intermittently as well.  It was a minor annoyance at first because I don't run outdoors much over the winter.  But as my mileage has steadily increased this summer while training for a marathon this happens more and more.

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@Hebrews12-1: your examples almost duplicate what I experienced last winter training for Boston Marathon! During the marathon ionic quit at mile 5. By then I’d switched back to training with my decrepit Surge.

But Since then something has changed with my ionic and it seems much more reliable and accurate. I have to suspect they pushed some software changes to me, I made no changes to my settings. 

It it feels as if ionic knows I’ve given up in it and had decided in a replacement. In the past month I’ve run 16 and 20 mile training runs with no disconnects. I realize this isn’t very helpful to you, but maybe you can try to make sure all available updates have been applied to your device.

edit: my firmware version is 32.10.20

[Hebrews12-1]

@bmw54  My watch is running 27.32.10.20 which I believe is the latest.

Here are additional instances since my last post.

Saturday 9/1 - Lost GPS at mile ~10 of 20 mile run.  I exited the app and restarted and it lost connection again ~7 miles later.

Tuesday 9/4 - Lost GPS at mile ~4 of 6 mile run.

[soss3osp]

I have the same setup: ionic and pixel 2 xl and i lost gps very often.

do you listen to music on your ionic while running? i am still trying to find out what the reason maybe that the ionic when losing the gps signal is not able to reconnect.

do you use any third-party apps or third-party clockfaces? 

in my case i did listen to music (as lousy as it works), had installed third-party apps (virtual runner and similar), third-party clockfaces. around two weeks ago i made the tenth factory reset, did not install anything, transferred no music. the last 4 runs it did work and the gps signal was stable (even on a 22km run). i am sick being a betatester and can not use a products for the purposes it was designed.

[Hebrews12-1]

@soss3osp

Yes, I listen to music and I do have a third party clockface.  I don't really use any other apps.  I am not looking for a smart watch.  I'm only interested in a fitness watch that has stand alone GPS + music.

[bmw54]

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@Hebrews12-1 wrote:

Here are additional instances since my last post.

Saturday 9/1 - Lost GPS at mile ~10 of 20 mile run.  I exited the app and restarted and it lost connection again ~7 miles later.

Tuesday 9/4 - Lost GPS at mile ~4 of 6 mile run.

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I wish our Ionic's were more consistent with their 'user experience'. Mine continues to be working better than last winter: it was 'mostly' accurate in this past weekend's 5-mile race (it lost some distance due, I believe, to a sharp hairpin turn at the start). And it maintains GPS connection in my long distance training runs (18 to 22 miles, at this point).

One possible difference is that I don't listen to music while running. My bluetooth headphones have never maintained connection more than a few seconds; it's one of several ionic functions I gave up on long ago.

Also, it's been discussed elsewhere in these forums that swiping the display after getting a GPS connection seemed to 'lock' the connection and prevent disconnects. That struck me as irrational, but then it occurred to me that I do, in fact, swipe my middle stat from minutes to distance each time I start my run.

I still think it sounds dubious, but it might be worth trying. We'll never know what twisted logic has been jammed into these devices.

[Yujimihori]

Hi I am having the same problem with my Ionic which I bought in April this year. Especially when I run with faster pace (4:00min/k or so) every single time it loses the GPS connection even at very open places. Also when I do a long distance run, it loses signal often. I actually tried to wear both Ionic on my left wrist and my 3yr old Garmin (FR225 - no the high end one) on right while running last time. Actually Garmin had no issue (of connection) but Ionic had. I agree that it may lose connection while running along shady places. But it is obviously an Ionic’s technical issue. I would appreciate it you guys take it seriously to fix, as somebody else says it is one of very basic function for outdoor athletes.

[Hebrews12-1]

I had the same experience last weekend. I ran with my Ionic on one wrist
and my 8 year old MotoACTV GPS watch on the other. The MotoACTV tracked GPS
perfectly on a 20 mile run. The Ionic lost GPS at about mile 7 and never
recovered until I restarted the running app at mile 10.

[evillama]

Ran 20 miles today training for a marathon and didn't trust my Ionic would keep GPS so I started my Strava app at the same time on my phone. Good thing I did because the Ionic's data was all over the place. I do listen to music from it, but I'll have to give that up since I'm really slow (13:30-14 min/mile) and my Ionic only had 11% battery after 20 miles (no way it'll last 26.2).

Isn't it possible to use the phone's GPS on a run? At least that way you can have GPS/music from the phone and HR data from the Ionic?

Sad that it has to come to that...at least until Fitbit does something about this.

[dblockdotorg]

Another thread with the same issue: https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Ionic/GPS-dies-at-around-7-10-miles-consistently/m-p/2892678#M66745

[Hebrews12-1]

I summarized my marathon training in a spreadsheet broken down by failures for each distance of training run I completed.  I've attached a snapshot so you can take a closer look if you like but here is a brief synopsis of training runs that had significant data points (4-8 runs) for a particular distance.

On 3 mile runs I had a 0% failure rate

On 5 mile runs I had about a 20% failure rate

On 6 mile runs that jumped up to a 25% failure rate

on 10 mile runs it was a 33% failure rate

on 20 mile runs it was a 133% failure rate (multiple failures in the same run after restarting the running app.)

Any run that was greater than 19 miles had a 100% chance of failure.

[dblockdotorg]

Nice excel work @Hebrews12-1! 

[Hebrews12-1]

Today I ran 6 miles by running two laps of a 3-mile loop.  I lost GPS connection at ~Mile 4 and it never recovered.  This means that I lost GPS for a 2 mile stretch in the exact path that I ran through < 30 minutes prior with no GPS issues.  I think that makes it pretty clear this is not a case of an obstructed GPS signal.

To: Fitibit

I want the Ionic to work, as I'm sure everyone who takes the time to come to these forums does.  I am willing to help Fitbit debug and resolve this issue however I can.  This includes, but is not limited to:

1.  You have my permission to go into my profile to look at my run activity.  I am more than happy to provide a list of dates to look at to make this easier.

2.  I am willing to load debug code onto my Ionic (or to use and return an Ionic pre-loaded with such code) and capture several GPS failures to help you understand the root cause for the failure.

Let me know how I can help resolve this issue.  I'm sure there are others on this forum who would be willing to participate as well.  I would love to see Fitbit taking some tangible steps toward resolving this issue.

[evillama]

Ditto - take whatever info you need from my profile to fix this.

But ultimately if it's just "flaky GPS hardware" then please enable Connected GPS capability with our phones - or the ability to "merge" a recorded run from phone with the data on the Ionic into a single activity.

To me, these would be acceptable workarounds until a more reliable Ionic 2.0 comes out.

[dblockdotorg]

Likewise from me. Please use any data from my profile as needed.

I don't think this is a hardware problem. As a fellow developer debugging this without actually seeing the code I bet there's something that gets confused because the GPS point history loops on itself, sends it into an infinite loop. If it were OSS I'd debug it myself 🙂

For me the whole point of having a GPS + music watch is that I run without a phone, so -1 on that work-around from me, personally. 

[dblockdotorg]

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 or the ability to "merge" a recorded run from phone with the data on the Ionic into a single activity.

I've been downloading and merging TCX files with https://gotoes.org/strava/Combine_GPX_TCX_FIT_Files.php

[evillama]

Agree - in that I'd rather have this fixed on the watch itself.

But this issue's been out there almost a year now...since the device came out. If Fitbit isn't looking at root cause anymore, just saying I'd be happy with an alternative solution...or at least, have options in general.

[Hebrews12-1]

For me running with my phone is a deal breaker.  I wouldn't have purchased the Ionic if stand alone GPS and music wasn't a feature.

[DavideFitbit]

Hi everyone, thanks for taking the time to share your experiences with the GPS accuracy and what you've experienced with the GPS disconnecting during the activity, I'm sure this will be helpful for other users as well. 

As it was mentioned previously, the GPS requires a direct path to the satellites in order to receive their radio transmissions, and there are several reasons why GPS data could be negatively affected.  The accuracy depends on both your environment and the weather; the GPS signal could be affected because you're underground, near many tall buildings, or as a result of atmospheric effects. 

I'm aware that you probably already tried all the basic troubleshooting steps, however, it won't harm to take a look at all the information here about the requirements, error messages and troubleshooting steps that could help to improve GPS accuracy. They could also be useful for other users checking this thread for the first time. Also, updating the firmware could be of help, if you haven't done so already. 

Also, make sure the Fitbit app is updated to the latest version available. 

Thanks for all the feedback, Fitbit continuously works to improve the quality of products and services, and all this information is useful to our team of developers. Thanks again for taking the time to share your experience. 

I hope this helps. 

[dblockdotorg]

@DavideFitbit it would be nice if people at Fitbit stopped copy-pasting the same canned information we've all read many times. Just go experience the product yourself.

When your GPS stops working and goes into perpetual "connecting ..." mode, stop the run, start a new run and see it reconnect immediately. Then re-read your long canned response and see if it helps.

[passaic]

I bicycling a lot. I run a lot. Many people use Garmin. Some Suunto.
Nobody has these issues except fitbit users.