Tracking open water swimming with a Versa and smartphone

[akarin]

I’m looking into changing my charge hr for a tracker with gps that will log swimming. At first the lack of gps on the Versa put me off but realistically I always have my phone on me and so for running at least that shouldn’t be an issue.

However, I go swimming in the sea a lot and was wondering if anyone knows whether it’s possible to get relatively accurate data, including GPS and heart rate data, by opening the Fitbit app on my phone, pressing start (can you log swimming through your phone?) and then putting the phone in my waterproof belt pack?

Many thanks

[supersmart01234 · Accepted solution]

Sadly, The Versa cannot show heart rate when you start a swim in the exercise app. You also can't start a workout as swimming on your phone, but I guess you could start it as running and use the GPS and when you're done, go into the exercise tab in the Fitbit app and change it to swimming. I don't think you'll see stroke data though. Also, Fitbit Ionic/Versa don't support open water swimming yet.

Hope I helped in some way!

[Swims]

Great, this what I was thinking of doing. Although I’ve got no where to store my phone! I might use the swim function to time my swim then edit the distance as I do loops at the moment, so know the rough distance providing I swim in a straight line 🙈

[Margot1980]

That's a bummer. I'm going to Greece next week on an open water swim trip and I was wondering if my versa can track open water swims. I guess not! 

What do you think would be the best way to track my swimming then? 

I'll try it in swim mode to start to see how it calculates. If that's not effective I'll put it in workout mode and see what it does. Wish me luck! 

[Swims]

I used mine OW the other day, to see how it would perform. The time was good, it said I did butterfly and breaststroke- I didn’t! It def didn’t record the accurate distance. I swam 2km, or thereabouts as I was swimming loops. My versa said I’d done 750m. Be interesting to see how yours fairs!

[Abbs_O]

Hi 

How did you get on with your versa in open Water? 

I've just received a versa 2 for Christmas and have just found out it only tracks in the pool... I'm an open water swimmer and would like to track my swims - I go off course a lot!

[Cakemix123]

I find this happens with my charge 3 and my mate who has a charge 4. We both did 1700m OW but both fit bits recorded 950m. You can change the log, but a bit disappointing.  I really like the fit bit range but I wish they'd bring in a decent open water app.  There's a lot more of us wanting it. Sadly I may have to get a Garmin. Even though they've been hacked!