[Series 6] What is up with the altimeter, too many hits & misses

[zerozoneice]

Come on Apple, really?
-7m +/- 100m....LOL

what's most annoying is that this is AFTER a resumed outdoor walk activity which was paused 15min before.
During the first part it did ok with elevation: 89m +/- 5m which is spot on for that location.
Pause and resume were performed in the same spot, with clear view to the sky.

Now the interesting part:

- Apple Fitness app reports max elevation 90, min -8m
- HealthFit app reports min 87m, max 90m (CORRECT) and GPS accuracy (horizontal from raw GPS data) between 2.1m and 4m

I have a Nike Series 6 44mm. Apple apps (watch app & workout app) allowed to use GPS only when active

What could be going on here?

 

[StumpyBloke]

It is absolute crap. Whenever the weather is grey, cloudy and wet my altimeter is up to 90 m out. It’s absolute garbage, I don’t know what Apple are playing at. It most certainly cannot ever be relied on. I have had two series 6 watches both with the same issue.

 

[zerozoneice]

same data viewed in another 3rd party app seems to show the correct elevation values throughout! That -7m reading (which persisted for at least couple of minutes) is nowhere to be found in elevation data exported from apple health. The only place it's present is on the watch and apple fitness in workout details.

I bet it's a bug in apple fitness and/or the altimeter app on the watch.

 

[michaelb5000]

I disagree with the coment that it is crap. The always on altimeter on the S6 has proven to be very reliable and very useful at least for me; so the best new feature of the S6 and nothing else is even close. I do agree that at times there can errors with the initial position, so the elevation it reports as your current starting elevation. But that is not what an altimeter is for, the watch is getting that value from GPS or the phone or some other source. The Altimeter is used for measuring relative change in position up or down. I find the accuracy of that to be very good, so the S3 was pretty good, but the S6 is noticably and significantly better.

I agree that there appears to be no way to get the elevation reading on the watch to correct itself or reset when there is an error in reporting that initial elevation. But I find that usually goes away and doesn't really impact the calculation related to elevation gained or floors climbed. It is also true that other apps that report elevation, including independently from the phone, give different values for current elevation and maybe have more accurate readings for initial position. So I use Workoutdoors and that has elevation, and I also have used or tested other altimeter apps (Altimeter+ and UpHigh) and they do give different readings. So where the watch is getting elevation is a bit of a mystery. The phone can be showing correct elevation and the watch will stick with its error, so it doesn't correct from the phone either.

 

[StumpyBloke]

I’m glad you’ve had better luck with it. But from my experience and from many others on here, it really is the biggest piece of **** I’ve ever had from Apple. How it can be so far as 90 m out I don’t know. And sometimes it will take days to correct and is very much governed by the inclement weather.

A few months ago loads of people in the UK lost their altimeter at exactly the same time and for the same duration… Days. Absolutely useless.

 

[wilberforce]

I almost traded in my S5 for an S6 just for the altimeter.
Reading this thread, kinda glad I didn't.