Surge should really improve to become useful

[sjordi]

Well, 

After searching in vain here are two things that make my Surge totally useless, especially for running.

1. No way to customize the screen. Having the current time is essential. If one goes jogging on the lunch break, it's important to be able to knwo what time it is before deciding to close the loop or go back.

And it seems impossible to leave the screen to come back to the watch and then back to the run exercise.

2. The GPS accuracy is not even a disaster, it's nonsense. Even very cheap GPS devices 10 years ago were better.

For fun I ran twice the same places with the Surge, my Garmin XT910 and my iPhone 4S... well, the Surge is a joke. I run into the rivers and the lake. I did cross a square at right angle to measure the accuracy. Well.. see the picture. 

[Sean_S]

Hi sjordi, are you having trouble seeing the time during a run? If you are looking for the time during a workout, it is one of the scroll through options on the bottom left of the screen. (You can scroll between HR, pace, steps, and clock). As for the GPS, it seems by the picture that you are running around some buildings and trees. The GPS is not perfect and sometimes it may an incorrect signal due to the trees and buildings. Hope this helps.

[SunsetRunner]

i have a Surge, and i'm on the road, no accuracy problem

[sjordi]

The problem is the low paced data acquisition. They should let the user pick a high rate to improve accuracy, the user would know it goes against battery life, but at least one would have the choice.

I'm running in full clear sky, no trees, no buildings, by the lake, sunny weather. The small square dots on the map are tents that were present at time the satelitte picture was shot but are not there now.

So I'm in the best conditions for GPS tracking and it's not even poor. It's under poor.

And if that was a problem of environment, that would affect the Garmin as well as the iPhone 4S which are accurate almost to a scale of 1 foot. The screenshots I added show the same day in the same conditons, I was wearing all the three devices during the same run.

The problem is not the environment, it's the Surge GPS quality. And I'm running, it's not that I'm at 100Mph in a Ferrari for the GPS to lose track.

I tried with my bike, open sky, no buildings in the country side, biking at about 13mph. It's a disaster too.

I disposed the Surge anyway, it's garbage for those activities.

I may give it a new try if Fitbit changes the firmware to make it usable. It's not the case right now.

[SunsetRunner]

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@sjordi wrote:

The problem is the low paced data acquisition. They should let the user pick a high rate to improve accuracy, the user would know it goes against battery life, but at least one would have the choice.

I'm running in full clear sky, no trees, no buildings, by the lake, sunny weather. The small square dots on the map are tents that were present at time the satelitte picture was shot but are not there now.

So I'm in the best conditions for GPS tracking and it's not even poor. It's under poor.

And if that was a problem of environment, that would affect the Garmin as well as the iPhone 4S which are accurate almost to a scale of 1 foot. The screenshots I added show the same day in the same conditons, I was wearing all the three devices during the same run.

The problem is not the environment, it's the Surge GPS quality. And I'm running, it's not that I'm at 100Mph in a Ferrari for the GPS to lose track.

I tried with my bike, open sky, no buildings in the country side, biking at about 13mph. It's a disaster too.

I disposed the Surge anyway, it's garbage for those activities.

I may give it a new try if Fitbit changes the firmware to make it usable. It's not the case right now.

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I recognized whick lake it is.

i checked the GPS data acquisition, by exporting to a .tcx file and opening it.

the 3 first records are at 5 seconds, and the following at 1 second, until the end, and the GPS positions are different for each 1 second record.

i suggest you to export your map to a .tcx file and import it to Google Earth to check this run.

[sjordi]

You're right,

Mine has a point every 1 second. But obviously the coordinates are way too bad.

Just checked with the TCX file from my Garmin and the variations are minor on this one, altitude is also very stable whereas the Surge coordinates vary much more, especially the altitude which varies more.

Obviously it should be the GPS chip they implemented. Or should I say GPS "cheap".

Then my Surge is rendered useless. How cool is that. I'm getting back to my Fitbit One.

Too bad. What a waste of money.