Versa - Hike Mode Distance Inaccuracy

[Havacuppatea]

Now then - welcome feedback on this little Versa problem :).  Pick the bones from this:  Just completed a 4.3 mile hike (known distance) alongside my wife.  Both my wife and I have newish Versa's.  We both use the default Stride Length. My Versa accurately tracked the GPS map route exactly but only returned a total distance of 1.85 miles; my wife, who's Versa incidentally never synchs with GPS on her phone, reported a true distance of 4.3 miles even without the GPS mapped element working. I'm at a complete loss to understand this.  My understanding was that if GPS maps the route fully then the mileage result is based on distance covered on the map rather than stride length. Is this assumption correct? Even if hiking distance covered is based solely on stride length and the GPS generated map route is purely for route information only, I can't understand how two Versa's side by side could produce an accurate distance covered result on one and less than half the real distance on the other. A fault or Stride Length / Stride Counter issue?  Comments please 🙂

[Marrrmaduke]

@Havacuppatea Your wife's stride-length accuracy was better than GPS one. It seems like there's an issue with connected GPS accuracy depending on the phone model. Unfortunately...

[Havacuppatea]

Thanks for the response; the phone is an Approved Model (Moto G III). Stranger and stranger - the embedded map for this Hike record will now not load (either on the phone or the PC app) - the Hike record is there but no map. First time I've used this new Versa to plot a Hike - I'm just trying to confirm if this issue is a physical fitbit tracker issue / comms / or config. The fitbit is perfectly fine for general synching and notifications. I successfully got the successfully connected to GPS vibration and phone notification throughout this hike. My understanding is that even if GPS connectivity is variable, the fitbit is clever enough to switch to Stride Length based Distance calculation. I've 'Your Timeline' switched off in Google Maps, otherwise I can't see anything in GPS mapping to not return an accurate route and distance, or indeed feed the embedded map image to the historical Hike record.  Hmmm 🙂  Any other suggestions welcome 🙂  

[SunsetRunner]

@Havacuppatea this is a long shot but are you sure you didn't use power saving mode on your phone? In most of the Android devices powersaving greatly reduces GPS accuracy. Another thing that comes to my head is old app issue not displaying map when the activity has been paused and then resumed. It occured to me a few times with my old Charge 2 during runs ( also connected GPS ). I know it is old issue but there is no a trace of info whether it has been fixed. Since then I never paused my activity again so can't confirm it. This distance really looks like at some point, maybe accidentally, you hit a pause. But it is just my guessing. Just remember about that power saving thing. Most of apps warns before starting navigation if phone runs in powersaving mode. Dunno whether FB app does so, too.

[Havacuppatea]

Great minds etc - I'd just set my Fitbit app to 'Not Optimised' in Battery Optimisation 🙂 - I'll see if that helps. I can't find anywhere in Android 6 to confirm that Fitbit is actually running in the background ... any ideas? Thanks.

[Marrrmaduke]

@Havacuppatea set Keep Alive Widget in your Fitbit mobile app to ON. Also, perhaps this thread will help you.