Series 2 wrong pace

[purpleparrotuk]

Love my Apple Watch but I am finding in standalone mode my pace and distance is way out. My last few runs I know I have run about 9m25 per mile but my Apple Watch records this as over 10 minute miles. My husband takes his iPhone 7 and records the run and i believe the pace on this is much more accurate.
Is it worth recalibrating the watch and doing a few 20 minute sessions like the Apple site recommends?

When I first had the watch the pace seemed to be fine but the last few runs it doesn't seem right. Could it be the latest update on it that messed up the calibrations?

 

[ftaok]

Are you running indoors? If you're outside, it should use the watch's GPS and you should get relatively accurate results.

The calibrate thing is for indoor runs and walks. Shouldn't need to recalibrate for outdoor runs, unless you've set it in "power save" mode, which I believe disables the GPS on the watch.

 

[purpleparrotuk]

Are you running indoors? If you're outside, it should use the watch's GPS and you should get relatively accurate results.

The calibrate thing is for indoor runs and walks. Shouldn't need to recalibrate for outdoor runs, unless you've set it in "power save" mode, which I believe disables the GPS on the watch.

Hi. Nope outdoor runs. It doesn't say on the website the calibration is for indoors. It says go to a good outdoor area.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204516

 

[Resqu2]

Hi. Nope outdoor runs. It doesn't say on the website the calibration is for indoors. It says go to a good outdoor area.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204516

It wants you to run outdoors some before you do indoor runs like on a treadmill, guess it learns the way you run but this doesn't apply to you since your running out side. Can you take your phone with you on a few runs?

 

[TxWatch]

Hi. Nope outdoor runs. It doesn't say on the website the calibration is for indoors. It says go to a good outdoor area.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204516

The website was updated after the AW S2 came out. It used to explain how to calibrate your AW S0 so you could run outside without your phone and get an accurate distance. (Which never worked for me until WOS3) I have to admit it is confusing now because it mentions using the S2.

Please try running with your phone and let us know if it improves the accuracy of the S2's GPS. It might help if the S2 cannot get a lock on the satellites when you start your run, but I suspect your results will be the same.

TxWatch

 

[purpleparrotuk]

The website was updated after the AW S2 came out. It used to explain how to calibrate your AW S0 so you could run outside without your phone and get an accurate distance. (Which never worked for me until WOS3) I have to admit it is confusing now because it mentions using the S2.

Please try running with your phone and let us know if it improves the accuracy of the S2's GPS. It might help if the S2 cannot get a lock on the satellites when you start your run, but I suspect your results will be the same.

TxWatch

Thanks for the reply. Taking my phone won't improve the accuracy of my watch since the GPS will be coming from the phone not the watch. The watch only uses the inbuilt gps when you don't have your phone.

 

[Obi Wan Kenobi]

Different GPS devices calculate distances differently.

For example, according to my different devices today my run was
4.89 miles according to my S0 Apple Watch
5.03 miles according to my iphone 6s
4.92 miles according to my Garmin 735XT

I'd like to believe the iPhone (it makes me look faster), but I think the Garmin is the most accurate. It uses GPS and GLONASS.

 

[TxWatch]

Different GPS devices calculate distances differently.

For example, according to my different devices today my run was
4.89 miles according to my S0 Apple Watch
5.03 miles according to my iphone 6s
4.92 miles according to my Garmin 735XT

I'd like to believe the iPhone (it makes me look faster), but I think the Garmin is the most accurate. It uses GPS and GLONASS.

I am curious how you were able to get two different readings from your AW S0 and your iPhone 6s on the same run? Every time I carry my phone on a run, my Watch S0 uses the phones GPS to calibrate my stride length. (Or so I thought)

 

[Obi Wan Kenobi]

@TxWatch
AW S0 does not use the iphone's GPS at all for running on it's native app. It measures arm swings with it's motion sensors, then makes a calculation based on that.

If you use other apps like Nike, or Strava, then the watch isn't measuring anything. It's just a screen for the data on your iphone.

By contrast, the AW does link to the phone to access GPS for it's native cycling app.

See my posts in an earlier thread about the discrepancies:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-watch-and-phone.1910074/page-2#post-21776338

 

[deeddawg]

what folks are missing is that "instant pace" from GPS generally is pretty bad. It's basically due to the inherent inaccuracy of each individual position fix. It can be smoothed quite a bit by software and approach usability as it's averaged over several position fixes, but at this point that doesn't seem to be done in the NRC app and I imagine also the Apple app. The challenge is I'm unsure how often the AW2 is taking a position fix. Looking at the TCX file from a NRC run I'd exported via RunGap app on my phone I'm seeing ten second intervals. If that's how often it's really getting a fix, the instant pace is going to remain pretty useless.

Arm-swing based pace/distance measurement is irrelevant for outdoor runs with GPS enabled on the AW2 other than to help it get a sense of what your arm swing looks like at different averaged paces, to then use on indoor runs.

 

[TxWatch]

@TxWatch
AW S0 does not use the iphone's GPS at all for running on it's native app. It measures arm swings with it's motion sensors, then makes a calculation based on that.

If you use other apps like Nike, or Strava, then the watch isn't measuring anything. It's just a screen for the data on your iphone.

By contrast, the AW does link to the phone to access GPS for it's native cycling app.

See my posts in an earlier thread about the discrepancies:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-watch-and-phone.1910074/page-2#post-21776338

I knew it used arm swings when not tethered to the Watch, but it has always been very accurate for me when I run with my phone. To the point, I never bothered to see if there was any differences between the two. Do you start a separate running App on your phone to measure your runs, while wearing your Watch for comparison purposes?

Also, is this still true for WOS3? When I ran with my phone a couple of times to calibrate my S0 for WOS3, I saw a nice GPS map at the bottom of the Watch screen. It was too small to really see, but the same map showed up in my phone. (As if the Watch was using the GPS...) After calibration runs, I no longer carry my Watch and I no longer see the little maps.

TxWatch

 

[Obi Wan Kenobi]

I knew it used arm swings when not tethered to the Watch, but it has always been very accurate for me when I run with my phone. To the point, I never bothered to see if there was any differences between the two. Do you start a separate running App on your phone to measure your runs, while wearing your Watch for comparison purposes?

Yes. My preferred running app is iSmoothRun. It uploads my date to Nike, Strava and RunKeeper, but before I discovered it, I would have all 3 apps open on my iphone.

When I start off, I start iSmoothRun on my phone. This gives me the iPhone's GPS data, and provides audio feedback over my headphones as to pace for the last 1/4 mile, and overall average pace, steps per minute, and it used to do my heart rate, but I now use Garmin's heart rate strap, which doesn't broadcast the data in a way the iPhone can receive.

I also start the native workout app on my AW (s0 running OS 3.1), and select outdoor run. iSmoothRun can show data on the watch, but I have Apple's work out app running instead.

I now also start my Garmin 735XT. I have the 'run' heart rate strap, which provides further metrics. I confess, I am a bit of a data junkie.

I noticed the distance discrepancy between the iPhone's and the Apple Watch's as soon as I began using it. I assumed it would improve after calibration, but the discrepancy remained. At first I was highly critical of the Apple Watch because of this. Not least because it made it seem that I was running slower than the iPhone had led me to believe. BUT after a series of half-marathons that my iphone consistently thought were 14 miles or more (rather than 13.1) I began to doubt my iPhone, and better appreciate my Apple Watch more. It's assessment of the distance was proving to be more accurate.

My Garmin is my most recent purchase. It's a dedicated device for the single purpose of measuring running, cycling (and swimming, although I'm not swimming with it at the moment). My friend has one, and it has accurately measured some of the half's we've done. It's leading me to believe that Apple Watch software is more accurate than I first thought.