Do I need to hold my phone to use the Health and Fitness / Steps / GPS Tracker observations?

[Dave47]

Health and Fitness / Steps / GPS Tracker observations

With the coming of warm weather in the Chicagoland area it's time to get out there and move around a little. So I did on a measured 3.6 mile path in a local forest preserve Savanna.

L635 set GPS Tracker On for mapping purposes.
Steps appeared to be counting.

But......

With 8,655 steps recorded, the distance displayed was .57 miles (??) WAY low by about 2.5 miles. Calories burned displayed 44, again WAY low. Something to do with .57 miles?

GPS Tracker map showed a green dot where I started and nothing else - disappointing.

I had the 635 in my fleece pullover pocket, wasn't holding it nor do I want to. I heard the audio announcement "starting workout now" after pushing the "walk" button then off I trudged.

I didn't look at the phone while walking. I don't want to stare at a screen. I want to set it and forget it until I'm done. Seems like a reasonable thing to do.

I believe I have all software up to date and have Motion Data enabled. The recent places does show a dot at the starting point of my walk, nothing else.

So do I need to hold the darn phone while doing stuff - I don't want to. Would you?
Might I have something not configured properly?
Is anyone reading this having similar issues or not?

BTW, this stuff was working OK last year. So software updates since broke stuff? What else?

Thanks for reading.

 

[Axeelant]

Re: Health and Fitness / Steps / GPS Tracker observations

Hey, not sure how your problem could be fixed or what went wrong, but i just use Endomondo app for all kinds of activities, except Elan Skis for skiing

It's a full package.
Endomondo Sports Tracker | Trgovina z aplikacijami+igrami za Windows Phone (Slovenija)

 

[Dave47]

Re: Health and Fitness / Steps / GPS Tracker observations

Update.
This morning I decided (for yuks) to move the Health and Fitness app from the SD to the phone's storage. A short while later the app got an update to v 3.1.4.481. Hummm. So I *guess* the app doesn't like the SD for reasons unknown to me.

I'll take a walk later to see if there is any difference in the app's behavior.

 

[Dave47]

Re: Health and Fitness / Steps / GPS Tracker observations

Took a few short walks after the above changes and things started working again. The map history made sense although one showed a straight line after I did a loop but the others appeared OK.

What I need to do now is give it a good test by taking a long (several mile) walk. Of course we had a temp drop of about 35 degrees since yesterday, so I'll probably wait till the temps rise a bit.

In summary some progress has been made, but there sure was a lot (IMO) of tinkering to get this to work and I'm still not sure if we're out of the woods yet. I can easily see where some users would throw up their hands and say forget it.

Found this article that has a section called "Solve problems with GPS Tracker". Also see Note on the bottom. Worth a read.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/health-fitness-app-help-wp

 

[Dave47]

Took a longer walk today, about 2.5 miles. Steps seemed accurate. GPS Tracker results were, to be kind, terrible. Walked in wide open space with a 3-bar GPS signal.

When I View History from GPS Tracker, nothing appears for today. Somehow there are 3 entries never seen before with the date 1 Jan 0001 and 0.0 miles. No clue how those got there.

 

[Dave47]

Wonder who changed the title of this thread and why?

 

[Dave47]

Another day another brief walk test. GPS Tracker seemed to be behaving, map looks OK but It did record 2 0.0 mile trips with a date of 1-Jan-0001, same as yesterday.

635 in my pocket during the walk.

 

[Dave47]

I think this will be my last update, at least for awhile.

Today I took another walk to test Steps and GPS Tracker. The walk was "stepped" about .5 miles, which is accurate. The GPS Tracker recorded and mapped the walk at .11 miles - not so good. Starting the walk had a 3-bar GPS signal. L635 was then placed in pocket and off I went on the walk. There were no 0.0 mile with 1-Jan-0001 "phantom" walks recorded. Yesterday's walk which was in the same general area was OK, using the same "protocol".

IMO, the GPS Tracker needs some work. It does work sometimes but other times not. Steps is OK.

 

[Dave47]

About a 3 mile bike ride Saturday in downtown Chicago. Lots of tall buildings to *maybe* get in the way of GPS signals, but GPS Tracker worked well. Here's map: