Versa GPS distance way off

[Davie1888]

Hi anyone managed to get a fix on the GPS data issue. Mapped a run on Strava and Fitbit today and it's out by 2km. Strava seems to be bang on when I use mapometer to plot the course I ran and the Fitbit app shows the exact same route however it says it's only 8km not 10km as per Strava and mapometer. This is driving my nuts as i'm trying to pace myself properly and this is obviously throwing off the data leaving me clueless as I run. I've checked my phone and there's nothing holding up the connection and it has all the correct permissions from what I can see, any help appreciated as this watch is pretty much pointless if it cant track my run properly.

[LiliyaFitbit]

Hi @Davie1888, it's nice to see you again in our Community Forums. I am sorry for the delayed response. 

I appreciate your participation in the Forums and sharing the details of the issue with the GPS distance being inaccurate. I totally understand how you are feeling and thank you for your efforts to resolve this. Fitbit devices calculate distance by multiplying your walking steps and walking stride length. Similarly, your running steps are multiplied by your running stride length. Since your Fitbit uses your step count to calculate distance until it finds a signal, the total distance recorded may be slightly less accurate if the GPS wasn't available for the entire time. For more information about accuracy of Fitbit devices and captured GPS data, please see this help article: How accurate are Fitbit devices?

Upon checking with our Support team, I was told that you have already contacted them. I know they will be glad to help you out and provide a solution, please keep working with them. 

Let me know if you have further questions. 

[Davie1888]

Hi Liliya, yes it is frustrating. The stride length doesn't seem to be an issue it's when my watch connects via GPS it throws off all the data, I didn't wait for it to connect today and it looks as though it didn't connect for the duration of the run and it's come back within 50 metres of the distance on strava. It seems to be whenever it connects to the GPS on my phone everything goes wrong.

[LiliyaFitbit · Accepted solution]

Thank you for your reply, @Davie1888. 

I appreciate the additional details, I totally understand how you are feeling. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, our team is looking into why this might be happening. I appreciate your patience and understanding. 

Be sure to keep your Fitbit device and app up-to-date to ensure you receive the quickest resolution.

Let me know if you have further questions. 

[MountainKat]

Hi there,

same issue here:

- Android 10 on Google Pixel 3a

- Fitbit versa (Firmware 32.17.7.14)

- Fitbit version 3.12.1

- Location enabled for Fitbit app, connection, GPS enabled on versa watch, no data restriction, all day synch, full battery, etc.

- Using GPS supported running exercise feature

My distance and with that my pace real-time and average was completely off with every single run. After some research I've checked the automatically set stride length and it was definitely too long for me. It also turned out that for the same round and time the pace changed with the automatically set stride length update.

So I disabled the auto setting and set it intentionally very low (from 110cm to 60cm). And surprisingly, even with a GPS enabled run the distance and therefore speed for the same round was significantly reduced.

So it seems that the GPS feature gives me a beautiful map but the distance comes only from stride length.

Which would be okay if it's correctly tracked with GPS but it's not.

So I took the Google fit data (steps and distance) calculated stride length and updated it in Fitbit and did another run.

Voilà, Google fit and Fitbit showed almost the same results.

It's very disappointing to see that the GPS connection is not used for distance as the stride length can easily change between runs.

But for now updating with Google Fit data seems to be the only option for me.

BTW. This completely wrong data also affects then the cardio fitness score updated with every GPS run.

[JC2103]

I have the exact same issue. Samsung Health and Google Fit both say that I've gone 1mi and Fitbit says that I've gone 0.88mi and since the distance is incorrect the pace is also incorrect and makes this completely useless for me.

[JC2103]

I'll have to try this out. This is garbage though, why would the exercise use stride length to calculate distance if it is connected to an extremely accurate GPS.

So stupid that the GPS is only used to make a map but not used for location or fitness tracking.

[MountainKat]

Running the same round twice per week.

Now constantly with Google Fit and Fitbit in comparison and Fitbit is off in 9/10 of my runs as the GPS signal gets obviously lost.

If you can't fix it than at least acknowledge that the signal was lost and the data is incomplete. So send a notification that the run couldn't fully be tracked, allow editing the data and just do not use it for fitness score calculation.

[Warrensvw]

I am having the same issue (Fitbit app 3.86 miles) and run keeper (5.22) . The run keeper is correct. I can see that Fitbit isn’t connecting until at least 1/2 mile and loses gps connection. I agree this is frustrating.