"fitbit recognizes biking on pavement. GPS will not be turned on"

[Euripides]

I was so happy when i purchased the Inspire HR, the 24/7 heart tracking really is insightful. 

I was excited to hear that biking was listed as an automatically tracked exercise. However, I simply can't get it to work properly. 

Android 

App has background data ON

Bluetooth is ON and connected to Inspire. 

It logs the exercise and shows it on a map, but only shows it as 0.12 KMs instead of aprox 3KM. 

I am noticing that the fitbit vibrated a few times on the way but says connected. I'm pretty disappointed and as it stands it's pointless for my daily cycles. 

I notice when I go into the automatic settings in the app for cycling that this message is underneath:
"fitbit recognizes biking on pavement. GPS will not be turned on". That seems really at odds at what I was told the device would do in the story when purchasing yesterday. 

Any help would really be appreciated 😞

[LZeeW]

Hello @Euripides and a warm welcome.  I hope the following explanation helps.  Fitbit has developed two device tracking choices -- auto-recognition and the Exercise app.  Your Inspire HR (along with several other trackers) has both.  The plain Inspire, for example, has only auto-recognition.

The auto-recognition does not give a distance for any of the auto-recognized exercises.  Why not?  I don't know.

In order to get the map, distance, etc., you have to track your bike ride starting and stopping the ride on your Inspire HR using the exercise app.

I think this Help article will help you.

I'm sorry, I can't help you with your distance problem.  I am an iPhone user.  There are Android specific settings.  Perhaps this Help article will help you.

[Euripides]

Yes I am also manually starting and stopping my bike rides.

It seems that the Inspire HR isn't staying connected to my phone in my pocket 30cm away. Its repeatedly vibrating during my ride which seems to indicate connecting/disconnecting.

I gotta say I'm pretty disappointed with the fitbit considering how much people go on about them - maybe they're aimed at more casual people who don't care about accuracy as much? 

[LZeeW]

@Euripides  I wish I could help you more.  You issue certainly sounds more like an Android app issue.  Is you phone on the list of compatible devices?  Also, you might want to browse the android app forum for insight in to keeping your Bluetooth connection while using the exercise app.

[Euripides]

Oh dear. I had no idea you needed to own a specific phone for this to work!

So my phone isn't on the list so I guess the fitbit won't work. 

oh well.