GPS Loses Connection

[Mclaglen]

The title basically says it. My GPS on my sense very often loses connection during walks. It seems it often loses connection after around maybe 50 minutes, sometimes occasionally reconnecting briefly, but very often never reconnecting at all for the remainder of my walk. I have many maps from my walks that just abruptly end mid walk. Today it lost connection after just over half an hour.

Its a little random, sometimes the GPS works fine through an entire walk. For example I had a 2+ hour walk this past weekend that it recorded the whole walk fine. But most every other walk I have taken in the last few weeks, the gps has failed at some point during the walk.

I have contacted support, and they gave me a bit of a runaround that it may be environmental conditions. I do occasionally walk in some more wooded areas, and sometimes its a bit cloudier. But it very often loses connection when conditions should be fine.

Some things I have tried:

- Have restarted the watch (and my phone) multiple times.

- Did a factory reset on the watch.

- I was even sent a replacement from fitbit that I got over the weekend. Had 1 successful walk where it kept connection the whole time, then the last 3 have failed.

Has anyone else experienced this or have any possible answers? Its obviously not the individual watch since I am on my second one that does the exact same thing. Part of my wonders if it maybe overheats and loses connection on longer walks, and the reason it lost connection so early today was because it was much hotter today than it has been recently.

I could really use some help. Combined with some of the slow heart rate updates (for instance walking up a big hill my heartrate will remain the same 3/4 of the way up then suddenly jump up by 30), and that the gps is essentially useless, I am kind of ready to say screw it and get something else. Would just be a shame for this to become an expensive paperweight (and it wouldnt even be good at that).

[t.parker]

I don't think anything can be done about that. Sense's GPS is just awful. Loses connection frequently and it takes ages to acquire a connection. Since I don't use it for anything serious I don't bother to wait for the connection to be established. Today, it took 10 minutes, and the connection was lost several times on the way (the Garmin watch didn't have any issue and connected within 10 seconds). The problem for me would be waiting 10 (or sometimes more) minutes as I run during lunchtime and I have planned the duration of it. Can't stretch it. In general, the GPS and HR of my (well... borrowed) Sense are so bad that it's just a broken toy. I don't believe that anything can be fixed, otherwise, it would already be.

[jbekmom]

Today I went on a walk. I walked 2 miles. It registered 1. I was in walk mode. When I stopped walk mode, it was searching for gps. I haven't figured out how to check the map yet. 

[Mclaglen]

Acquiring the GPS to start the run is a little slow, but its never taken my watch 10 minutes. 30 seconds to a minute maybe at worst. Still annoying since none of the other devices I have used that have had GPS have ever taken that long to acquire, except maybe really old ones.

But even now, I lose GPS connection during my longer exercises on probably at least 80% of them.

I have contacted customer support multiple times. The replacement watch I was sent exhibited the issue almost immediately. I have been asked to send it back in so they could examine it, but I sent it over 2 weeks ago and havent heard anything back from fitbit yet.

I am not a fan of apple, but this watch has given me so many issues that I wish I was an apple user because the apple watch just seems like its probably SO much better in every way other than price. Im thinking about switching to garmin, because if theres one thing I know garmin will get right, its the gps. Just seems like their watches might be lacking a bit on the smartwatch side of things. Guess ill be waiting until whenever the new google wear watches become available.

[LokeAa]

Hi @Mclaglen 

GPS indeed needs a clear path to the sky, but that doesn't mean it is affected by clouds, rain, or snow. The most common factor that interferes with GPS is buildings. I recommend you download "GPS Test" to your phone to check out the GPS signal where you are.

[Mclaglen]

@LokeAa Thanks for pointing that out. However, I am fairly confident that I have ruled that out as a possible cause for the connection issues I see.

In my case, I am in a very suburban area with plenty of views to the sky, and the tallest buildings around are houses. And for most of my exercise, I am not even close enough to houses that it should make a difference. I do however walk/job through some forested areas, which I know can also block the signal.

But I am confident that I can rule that out as a cause as well. I often repeat the same routes on my walks and jogs. I will be in heavily forested areas for 15-20 minutes and the signal seems fine (as confirmed by the map afterwards) before it finally loses connection. And it almost never reconnects, even after I exit the forested area and get back into an area with more than enough of a clear view of the sky. To further my confidence that its not environmental factors, I have had the GPS cut out in the same manner while on the side of the road with no tall trees that close and no buildings that close either. And through all of this, I still get the occasional exercise on the exact same routes where the GPS functions perfectly (as far as I can tell) the entire time and does not cut out. Unless there is something else going on with the position of the satellites, it doesn't make sense to me that it should work fine sometimes, and then completely fail and never recover most other times (and do it at seemingly random spots along my walk too).

I have also been over this with fitbit support, they brought up the same issues, and I explained the same as I have here, to the point that they sent me a replacement device. It just happened to do the exact same thing too. So it seems to me at this point that this likely is not an issue that can be solved because it seems like there is either a hardware or software/firmware issue on the device itself that fitbit either doesnt care about, or doesnt know about. All I know is that a major advertised feature just does not work reliably enough for me to consider it useful.

[LokeAa]

 I have had some issues with my Sense, but never with GPS. It connects in a couple of seconds, and when I lose the signal because I am walking under the road or a bridge, it reconnects as soon as I am out in the open. You mention the position of satellites, which is why I suggested downloading an app to your phone. I do not think it is likely, I mean there are many GPS satellites above us, and we only need three to connect. 

I remember reading one should stop and wait a couple of minutes if losing GPS signal without any obvious reason. The sense will only try to reconnect a certain number of times, or after a certain amount of time, sorry but do not remember which it was. 

You are sure you are not living close to a secret military base? That¨s not entirely a joke. In northern Norway, we have GPS problems regularly. Why? The Russians are jamming us. So, military?

EDIT:

Sense is using both onboard GPS, and connected GPS. I did not know. I would try to:

1. Have you permitted Fitbit App to use location from your phone? If "No" then try to enable it

• If "Yes" try to disable it

It is enabled on my device, and I have not experienced any problems. I cross my fingers.

[Mclaglen]

@LokeAa Heh, no, no secret military bases here. Would have to be a really really well kept secret.

So, today, the GPS did not disconnect, but I suspect that may have more to do with the fact that I just did a factory reset on my sense yesterday. I also downloaded a gps test app and opened it up a number of times during my walk and as far as I could tell, the GPS signal was more than strong enough even in the forested areas. I also never had any issues with the GPS on my versa 2, which was only using the connected GPS from my phone.

As far as stopping... Im not about to interrupt my exercise and stop for a few minutes in the hope that the GPS reconnects. I think in that scenario I would rather keep my heart rate up than have to stop in the middle of something like 80% of my exercises. It does make sense though that it eventually just gives up and stops trying to reconnect. I still however cannot imagine why it would lose the signal in the first place and not be able to reacquire it when for all intents and purposes it seemed fine just minutes before. Most of the time the maps even show a decent GPS path that matches my exercise right up until the signal gets lost, then nothing.

To address your edit... Are you sure about that? I don't believe the sense can use connected GPS, and according to this help article: https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/1874.htm the only device that seems to have a built in gps that can also use connected gps is the charge 4. Regardless though, the app on my phone does have the full location permission, and battery optimization is turned off. Im guessing the only real way to use connected GPS is to start activity tracking directly from my phone, which I can confirm does pull up a map with GPS from the phone. However, I have no idea if it will try to count the steps from my phone or if it will go back and use data from the sense too. Plus thats inconvenient especially since the whole point of having the watch and having gps in the watch, is to use it there.