Apple Watch Series 4 - GPS issues

[peejay1977]

Hi all,

Sorry if this has been answered before, but does anyone else get massive issues with GPS on their Apple Watches? I've had the Series 0 (no GPS), a Series 3 and now a Series 4 and I have suffered a similar issue across all of them.

I took up running last year and for the most part, my runs recorded using the watch seem "fairly" accurate albeit with some mocking from my colleagues who use Garmin that my Apple Watch seems to exaggerate the distance I've covered but that's another story.

What I do have is an issue where sometimes the GPS just seems to go completely loopy, case in point:

As you can see, I did not suddenly gain the ability to walk on water. I have tried using the Strave app, Runkeeper and also the built-in Workout app but I get the same issues.

Just to reiterate, it was the same when I used my Series 0 linked to my phone, my Series 3 on its own with no phone and now my Series 4.

Does anyone know if the Watches without cellular still use the phone to assist in the GPS accuracy? Also, I noticed that my watch is connected to my work wifi which can linger some distance off into the car park so I'm wondering if this could also be an issue? I've removed my Watch from the wifi now but I'm just curious as this is really beginning to be a massive problem. I have already reset the calibration data on my watch.

Thanks


Paul.

 

[jhfenton]

I haven't had any GPS issues (Series 4), but I also don't run with my iPhone or run anywhere near known wifi networks. It shouldn't, but I can imagine a bug where the wifi-assisted location services could cause a problem.

I actually see really good GPS tracks. On my run Saturday, I ran multiple trail loops, and the multiple tracks line up well. Where you see a split at the bottom left, I actually did take a wider path to an overlook on the first loop. On the second loop I saw a couple at the overlook so took the shortcut.