GPS accuracy during exercise

[wrebble]

Picture says more than thousand words so... picture first.

How can it be that the same lap is measured THAT wrong. It is 1,27 km difference which is BAD. Both lines run on the same road so it can not be just "difference". Step count is the same and also the time. Which one can I trust at all? It isn't the first time it has happened (at least once more). 

FitBit app is up to date. My Versa 2 is up to date.

I started my run the same way: opened exercise - choose "run" - wait FitBit to connect with "connected GPS" - start!

Also the settings are the same when I start the run. I activate "do not disturb" and "always on display".

Am I doing something wrong? Is the app so bad that it does not know how to calculate distance? Is it problem with my watch? I looked into it and it seems this problem has been with you for 3.5 years. Is there seriously no fix?

Anyways, I posted this in "App" section because it seems to be problem with an app. If not let me know.

Moderator edit: Subject for clarity 

[RicardoFitbit]

Hi @wrebble, welcome to the Community Forums! 

Thanks for bringing this to our attention and for the screenshots that were attached into your post. To better assist you with this, can you please let me know when was the first time you experienced this issue and how many times since then? In the meantime, please try a restart on your Versa 2 and then check the information that's specified on: Why isn't GPS working on my Fitbit device?

Keep me posted and let me know if you have any additional questions.

[wrebble]

Hi!

I will be busy for a few days and I try to answer as soon as possible. I just measured the distance with map (our road map) and got 4,1 km which means both Fitbit measurments can be wrong. I will try to measure the real distance with Samsung Health and with a car (if I can).

The 3.47 km was on cloudy day and if I remember right 4.74 km was on sunny day (Idea - Fitbit should save weather information which were on the day person exercised like Samsung does)).

GPS signal was strong on both days. Like you can see it shows the same lap on both runs and the line is running on the same road. Doesn't Fitbit measure distance from map?

It seems the distance has been wrong since beginning of the / mid April. I started running just recently but before I recorded walks and there are 0.5 km difference. But I can not take this to account because like I understand Fitbit records exercise walk distance by step count and does not include GPS or am I wrong? It means when I have faster pace, it records fewer steps (because of longer stride length) and fewer kilometres are calculated? Or walks are still measured with GPS?

I will get the data to you in few days.

[wrebble]

Hello

So I tested with Samsung Health (SH onward) and it showed me that the lap is 4,1 km long like I measured on the map. And it showed me 3 times the same length. And yes, I did reset my Fitbit day earlier.

SH on the left and Fitbit on the right. Measured the same lap at the same time so there was no difference in weather nor GPS signal strength.

SH showed me 4934 steps and Fitbit 4938, so it is the same. 

SH showed me average pace 11'01"/km and max pace was 10'13"/km. Fitbit unfortunately showed me average 12'26" and low pace was 119'02"/km and high pace was 6'20"/km. I get the minimum pace, because I was walking my dog and i sometimes stopped for a few seconds. What I do not get is why my high pace was 6'20"/km, because I did not run.


Overlap for both SH and Fitbit GPS. They both run on the same road so GPS data is accurate.

The interesting part is when I walked my 3 km lap, both Fitbit and SH showed me same distance length. SH showed me 3,21 km and Fitbit 3,24 km.

So to answer your question when did it start - from 23. March. It was when I had my first run. I did run longer that day (same lap, just to the starting point) and it showed me 4,02 km. So basically I can say it has shown me inaccurate data from the day of purchase (have been using Fitbit from 13. March)

I do trust SH more than Fitbit. When I did not own the watch I used my phone and I did get same length to same lap all the time. There was maybe to max 20 m difference. 

[wrebble]

More data.

16.05, cloudy weather. It rained at the end of the run

18.05, mostly cloudy (thin clouds).

20.05. Mostly sunny. One big cloud with lightning in west, nothing else.

I got 2 suggestions which I am going to try out.
1) keep screen "on" while running.
2) "auto-detect" run. 

[DawnH1]

The big thread on inaccurate distancethat I was commenting on seems to have lost the option to reply anymore, which is odd. Anyways, I will reply on this one instead. The last two runs have been accurate. Anyone else, or am I being lured into a false sense of security? 

[Sjnoelie]

They indeed seem to have locked "our" thread (https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Versa-Smartwatches/Distance-on-GPS-map-doesn-t-match-with-exercise-s...) without any meaningful response.

However, this topic covers exactly the same issues. @wrebble, you're not alone. Everyone seems to be suffering from varying degrees of connected gps distance inaccuracy, typically 10%-20% off. Here's my most recent example. The distance from Runkeeper equals the distance from Google Maps.

[TheJBird]

Aye they have locked the thread...

I guess they are fed up with people complaining about the lack of accuracy with Fitbit when using GPS devices.  There's a lot of disgruntled customers there!

I went on a walk yesterday... 5.81 miles according to FitBit, but 8.07 according to "Map my Ride".   Both have the same route in the map.

[TheJBird]

To further add to this... Here's the map in Fitbit, 5.81 miles:

Export the TCX file (available on the website), and import into GPXSee, and guess what... 8.1 miles...!

This proves that the Fitbit / GPS is working and tracking correctly, however the App is showing the wrong mileage.

[ahefner33]

It's usually from it losing connection to your phone, then switches to your stride length, which in then in turns try's to guess where you ran when it finally reconnects.

Ive had days where I run on our beach and then back up to the side walk and Ill have a straight line going through houses, trees, and places nobody can even access.

I figured this out when I realized the Versa 2 wont stay connected even holding it in my same hand.

I've done all the reboots, factory resets, uninstall/install, download all updates, trying different phones.

But I will say I've had this with all the fitbits I had that were connected GPS which is Charge HR(BEST) imo, then charge 2, charge 3,.

Ionic did good but the HR sensor and pace stability was terrible.

Hope that gives you a little of what I've experienced.

[wrebble]

I've heard that "loses connection and uses stride length while reconnects" excuse before.

My Versa connects well to the phone / GPS. It seems that when I start running after connection, it calculates my stride length within few hundred meters and then uses only that. So when I run faster in the beginning and slower mid run, I will "run more". GPS works but distance is "stride length only". And it does not recalculate mid run.

I once was running 60 min/km (measured with Samsung Health) just to mess with it and Versa showed me 5 min/km.

@DawnH1 False sense of security! Believe me

[Sjnoelie]

Even if the Versa 2 would lose the connection to the phone, the Fitbit app on the phone should resume recording data. I think in fact it does, because the path it draws on the map seems very accurate. It does not make any sense that the distance is so far off and after all our posts we still have no acknowledgement of this problem from Fitbit. 

[Bart_NL]

Yes, for me as well ( using the original Versa).

It's driving me crazy.

[DawnH1]

I went out for a walk earlier and fitbit was surprisingly reasonably accurate in terms of distance. It was out by 0.09miles. This is the third time in a row it has been acceptably accurate. 

I'll share my settings incase others want to try, but firstly a bit of background. Ages ago I checked permission of the fitbit app and it has permission to run in background and access to my location etc...

The stride length for me appears to be the most buggy. I have had it in automatic and set, both these settings have given correct and incorrect distances. I have also changed the stride length based on steps from fitbit and distance from strava. Again, this had given correct and incorrect distances. Now I calculate my stride length everytime from my walks and runs and change them in the settings.  Typically I might get a difference of 0.2 inches either way.

So these are the settings I currently have, your guess is a good as mine if they will work tomorrow! Especially as the correct data seems to be there when people export the file to strava.

Battery: high performance 

Wifi and data: off

Stride length: set (automatic off)

The app: open and in the foreground (so it is the screen shown when you unlock the phone).

The final setting is the most recent change I have made, no idea why it should make a difference! I've always had it open, but recently made sure it was in the foreground.

I just find it ridiculous that this has been going on for so long, and it is up to us users to get the bloody thing to work.

[wrebble]

I will try my 8.3 km run tomorrow without locking the screen. Once when I got accurete distance when I ran 1km without doing it. Then I closed it because of reasons.

@DawnH1 Do you remember if you unlocked your screen mid-walk, did the app start Syncing or Refreshing?

[DawnH1]

@wrebble  it can't sync when I am out as I have wifi off, but I do make sure it is synced before I set out. I have wifi off as I read that bluetooth and wifi share the same bandwidth, so I figured that there might be some conflict between then causing bluetooth to drop out. I am not sure if versa 2 had it's own gps? The versa has gps connected. 

I do unlock the phone when I am out to compare strava and fitbit current distances or to change songs.

[wrebble]

@DawnH1 But but... doesn't it need to be in sync? Data goes from watch to phone and other way around? 

Some moderator said in this post that Versa 2 has built in GPS chip, but It still needs connected GPS. Dunno

[wrebble]

So today I went for a run and I got.... lucky? I got my running distance to be 8.22 km, which is accurate because I started running a bit later than usual. Don't really know if this was luck or I did something to fix it. I will test it again tomorrow.

There are 2 things I tried.
1) I did not lock phone screen (one Fitbit user suggested)
2) From phones GPS settings I disabled "use bluetooth devices to get more accurate location" or smth

If I will get accurate distance again tomorrow, then I'll upload in-depth about what I did. (TBH I have no faith in this)

[DawnH1]

@wrebble the versa original stores the data on the watch and syncs when it can I think. It syncs fine when I get back from my run, using the settings I have. I also leave my phone downstairs at night, which is probably a bit far for bluetooth.  It can only sync over bluetooth for me as I only connect my versa to the wifi when I update. 

Also great that your run distance was accurate 😃

[DawnH1]

Alas, my run was under again. By 0.7 miles, all settings as before. This is so frustrating. Come on fitbit, what exactly are you doing to fix this?