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iPhone Vs. Watch: Steps Don't Match

Arkanok

Arkanok

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 13, 2007
552
115
So I took my watch out for a jog/walk today, taking my iPhone with me in my pocket. I fired up the Nike+ running app to track my runs [I use the Nike site to compare two friends] and the way I went.

After my jog I checked the steps within the Health app to compare how close the phone and watch step counts, however, there's quite a big difference between the two.

So as you can see, the first entry says 38 steps with the watch and 21 with the phone. If you look down further, the one at 3:20 PM has 109 using the watch and 166 with the phone. To me that's quite a difference and i'm just not sure either of these two devices are accurate.

Is this normal?
 

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Watch is attached to your wrist, phone is in your pocket, I presume? So the motion they detect won't be the same. I would be surprised if the numbers came out the same. 38/21 is just too small a sample to make any sense out of, and a difference of 109/166 feel normal to me. Actually, I have two different step-counting apps on my iPhone, and they often differ from each other by about that much.
 
Night Spring said:
Watch is attached to your wrist, phone is in your pocket, I presume? So the motion they detect won't be the same. I would be surprised if the numbers came out the same. 38/21 is just too small a sample to make any sense out of, and a difference of 109/166 feel normal to me. Actually, I have two different step-counting apps on my iPhone, and they often differ from each other by about that much.
Click to expand...

So would it be ideal for me to just hold my phone in my hand during walks, jogs or runs?
 
My dad has compared iPhone, watch, and external tracker steps. His finding is that an iPhone in a pocket or any hip, pocket, or belt attached activity tracker is more accurate than the watch. But, it is just the nature of the beast.
 
Arkanok said:
So would it be ideal for me to just hold my phone in my hand during walks, jogs or runs?
Click to expand...

No, why would you do that? Just pick one -- iPhone or watch -- and use that. You don't need an exact step count, you just need to know how you did today in comparison to what you did in the past.
 
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Im confused. At 3:17 you had 167 steps, and at 3:23 you had 21 steps. Were you walking backwards in time? And I still can't figure out how on a jog/walk you would only take 146 steps in 6 minutes? You had to have been walking backwards really really slow. ;)
 
woodynorman said:
Im confused. At 3:17 you had 167 steps, and at 3:23 you had 21 steps. Were you walking backwards in time? And I still can't figure out how on a jog/walk you would only take 146 steps in 6 minutes? You had to have been walking backwards really really slow. ;)
Click to expand...

It's not showing the total cumulative steps, just how many steps you took in that particular minute.
 
Night Spring said:
It's not showing the total cumulative steps, just how many steps you took in that particular minute.
Click to expand...

Ok, I get it I guess. I still don't see how you could walk at a pace of 21 steps a minute. Thats one step every 3 seconds. Try it. It's harder than you think :)
 
I would have expected that the combined sensors of both devices would be used to determine things like steps taken. It's disappointing that this is not the case.

Then again, Apple is very bad at integrating all of its products. I get a text message to my phone, read it, and it still shows up as unread on my iPad. I dismiss calendar reminders, yet they still show up when I fold my macbook open, and so on.

They could - and definitely should - work a lot more on fixing stuff like this. They want to create their own ecosystem. Then USE the full potential of that ecosystem, god dammit... You got the money; huge giant piles of it. It's just the will that is lacking here.
 
Out of curiosity have you done the calibration process so the watch can assess your stride?
 
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