The watch isn’t some angel watching over your shoulder with a click counter for every step you take.
It’s got an accelerometer and a computer and some pretty good algorithms. The basic idea is that, if you’re moving (which you were in the tomtom) and there’s a sudden bounce (your potholes) then it assumes that that’s caused by your foot bouncing off the pavement … typically what one refers to as a “step.”
Any other pedometer is going to be susceptible to similar miscalculations. It’s simply not reasonable for an accelerometer strapped to your wrist to be able to detect every subtle distinction between you walking and your wrist moving in a way that’s not inconsistent with walking.
Nor is it intended to be perfect.
The fundamental purpose of the Watch’s step counter is to encourage you to lead an active life. If on one day you get credit for extra steps you didn’t actually take, who cares? And if you ride the tomtom every day, those “extra” steps become part of your baseline — meaning that the step trend will still tell you if you’re walking more or less over the course of weeks and months.
If you’re just looking for an excuse to snigger because you discovered that it’s not hard to fool the watch … may I suggest?
Go for a walk. With or without the watch, doesn’t matter — just go for a walk. Get up, get out, move around … feel the ground beneath your feet, hear the sounds, see the sights, breathe the air. Do so most days of the week. If you really feel like, it while you’re walking, contemplate what it means that the watch is or isn’t counting your steps, correctly or incorrectly. What is the significance of the way the watch is or isn’t counting? Can you do better? How might you go about improving it?
b&
