Charge 3 distance is way off.

[teddy70]

I'm a new charge 3 owner. I have found the walking distance to be short by 16% walking and 27% biking. I've reset it prior to each exercise.I exercise every day and the distance is off each time.I notice the Fitbit vibrating often when in exercise mode.I have a Moto G7 android smart phone paired to the charge 3.Is there something I can do to get the distance to be close to correct? Should I call the help line?

[JohnnyRow]

Can't tell anything about distance without knowing whether or not you have Fitbit connected to phone's GPS.

[ZenZenRunner]

My GPS is all over the place with this watch. Looks like I'll be buying a nicer TomTom or Garmin. Saying is true you get what you pay for. Guess I just have to pay 400 plus to get accurate measurements. 

[ZenZenRunner]

FitBit has a lot of reports of GPS issues. Good luck, seems like a great heart rate monitor but less than accurate GPS. Which is dumb because other apps use the same GPS and they match but fitbit is unable to process the GPS bytes accurately...

[teddy70]

My phone updated to Android 9 and now I get spot on miles traveled..Now my Fitbit works like a charm.I really like all the info I get like sleep,heart rate, and fitness score. I hope the many others with distance problems get informed feedback. I have noticed some flip responses to customers with similar problems to the one I had. It seems see that  they gave up on their fitbit when they didn't get understanding support.I was let down when asked if my fitbit was linked to my smart phone after I had stated that my charge 3 was paired to my smart phone.I am glad I stuck with it.

[JohnnyRow]

@teddy70 

As I see it, you stated your charge 3 was paired to your smart phone, which means your smart phone is what you use as your sync device.  It is quite possible, and common, to be paired to your smart phone for syncing, but not to use your phone's GPS.  One common example of this would be someone who does not take his phone with him when running.

Apparently when you said your fitbit was paired with your smart phone, you thought that made it obvious that you were also using your phone's GPS.  That was not obvious to me.  So I asked for more information.

Distance is calculated totally differently, depending on whether or not you are not using phone's GPS.

[teddy70]

By getting activating my Motorola upgrade I now get accurate mileage readings. I got Android 9 installed and it was free.I too like the other Fitbit apps so I hope you can find an easy fix like I did.

[ZenZenRunner]

Unfortunately I take my phone with me, still no dice. I honestly like the simplicity of running with just a watch (Garmin/TomTom). To get the full benefits of fitbit one has to be tied to their phone. And if they are lucky it seems the mileage might be accurate.

[teddy70]

Not all smart phones are compatible with Fitbit. I Googled "Fitbit compatible smart phones" and found several sites that seemed knowledgeable.  My phone wasn't but now is compatable. My Fitbit GPS is now saying the exact same thing as Strava. 

[teddy70]

I returned my Charge 3.It is not giving consistent results.It worked perfectly for a short while then went back to being way off. My first Charge 2 was pretty accurate and I'll consider buying a Fitbit in another couple of years.  ✌️

[cantfineanswer]

my gps is on and this issue has been happening for a long time. Have spoken to person and gotten case number and keep getting same answer. -they are Working on it watch for update. A bunch of words-still happening

[ZenZenRunner]

So I figured out what the problem was. It was the power save mode on my
phone. It kept kicking interfering with the connection. Hope that helps.