I am puzzled that Strava on my IPhone 14Pro or Samsung S20+ 5G always records longer distances and different elevation to my other devices. I have attached two printouts from GPSSee which superimposes the tracks. The Samsung/iPhone Strava tracks are always the longest with about ten per cent added to a track of about 16km.. The other devices are WorkOutDoors on an Apple Watch, Bad Elf GPS Pro, Garmin Fenix 7X Pro Solar and a Dual XGPS160. Why is this happening as ChatGPT does not have a solution? Thanks.
Answered
Strava Accuracy Compared to Other GPS Devices
+1Best answer by Jana_S
Hi
to avoid misunderstanding: Strava is an app, not a device. Its accuracy is limited by the device it's running on.
In general, a phone will be less accurate than a watch (speaking of recent multi-band gps watches).
The accuracy may be negatively impacted by multiple factors. For example - the app not having permissions to work on the background; the device being in a low power mode (resulting in less frequent refresh); the device being tucked in a backpack or similar; the activity being done in an area with restricted view of the skies (under a roof, in a tunnel, in a city among very tall buildings etc). All these things may result in a zigzag route instead of a straight line (making the distance longer than it actually was) or cutting corners (making the distance shorter).
If you want to test the accuracy, simply do an activity on a certified distance, e.g. a 10k run, and compare the outcome from different devices / apps.
+29Hi
to avoid misunderstanding: Strava is an app, not a device. Its accuracy is limited by the device it's running on.
In general, a phone will be less accurate than a watch (speaking of recent multi-band gps watches).
The accuracy may be negatively impacted by multiple factors. For example - the app not having permissions to work on the background; the device being in a low power mode (resulting in less frequent refresh); the device being tucked in a backpack or similar; the activity being done in an area with restricted view of the skies (under a roof, in a tunnel, in a city among very tall buildings etc). All these things may result in a zigzag route instead of a straight line (making the distance longer than it actually was) or cutting corners (making the distance shorter).
If you want to test the accuracy, simply do an activity on a certified distance, e.g. a 10k run, and compare the outcome from different devices / apps.
+23There’s also a feature in Strava, but only via the website to recalculate your distance. Have you ever used this feature?
+1Thanks I tried this yesterday and it made the tracks even longer. On paper the iPhone and Samsung should be more accurate with more modern multi-band chips (L1, L5 and SBAS) whereas the Bad Elf and Dual simply receive L1 GPS.
+1Thanks I have checked all of these factors such as background running before snd the Strava tracks were produced on freshly booted iPhone and Samsung models with multi-band capability which should make them more accurate than my data loggers with old technology.
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