Do I need to have my phone on me to track running vs walking time/distance with Fitbit One?

[Tapinco]

Hi everyone, is it possible for Fitbit One to record time and distance for running and walking without having phone/app on me? How does Fitbit One distinguish if I am running or walking? It seems to manage to record the total Kms and the time, but there's no difference between whether I am running 5km or walking 5 km or walking 10km. Thanks in advance 

[SteveH]

You only need your phone to sync the data from the One to the fitbit servers and the dashboard on your app. The One will track quite happily on its own.

The One will track a walk or run and include the data in the day's totals. If you want to see the data just for the walk or run then you can do this by:

1. Hold down the button until you see the timer start. While your tracker is recording an activity, its icons will blink continuously and you will see a stopwatch for the duration of the activity.
2. When you're done with your workout, hold down the button until you see the timer stop.
3. Sync your tracker.
4. Log into your fitbit.com dashboard and go to Log > Activities to see the activity. Note that you can't view activity details from the One in the Fitbit apps.

It calculates the distance by multiplying your step count by the stride length in your profile settings. It uses 2 stride lengths - one for walking, one for running - but fitbit have not disclosed when it switches from one to the other. The assumption is that it's down to step frequency and/or impact.

[Tapinco]

Thank you for your reply, Steve. I have updated the stride length to reflect running vs walking. Fitbit records both activities as walking...what am I missing? Is your Fitbit One working properly to reflect the right activity?