[KNOWN ISSUE] GPS lock with Wear OS3

[ScottM]

I reecently had to reset my Fossil Watch Gen 5 and then discovered that Stava is no longer available in the App store for Wear OS 2.

Forced into buying a new watch.. Fossil Gen 6, with Wear OS 3 I am having trouble with Strava unable to get a GPS lock. Can anyone offer advice.

Previosuly, if I had Strava open on my phone and it had a GPS lock then the app on my watch would as well. Now the app on my phone has a GPS lock but Strava on my watch just keeps saying it is trying to get a GPS fix. If I start an activity on my phone and watch at the same time, it takes about 5 minutes for the watch to get a lock.

I assume it is only getting GPS location from the watch and not from the phone.

In 'Location' on the watch, 'Use Location' is on and says 'get location from phone and watch'.

Strava and the Fossil app have location permissions enabled on both the phone and the watch.

Phone is a Huawei P20 Pro, only change since moveing from Gen 5 to Gen 6 watch is installing the Fossil app to manage the watch instead of the Wear OS app. Both have location permissions enabled.

Is there something that I may be missing?

[Michael_A]

Commenting my experience here in case it helps anyone else. I have a TicWatch 3, not a Fossil, but maybe this fixes the problem for other devices too.

TL;DR: You need a clear view to the sky!

My watch had worked fine, but suddenly this morning when I went for a run in the forest it took too long to get a fix. After about a minute I just gave up and started the activity.

Now I have been trying to fix this issue for over an hour, installed the "Wear GPS Fix" app, waiting for 5-15 minutes at a time (keeping my screen alive just in case). Nothing was working. Thanks to the "Wear GPS Fix" app, I could see that the watch literally was not finding any sattelites ("Found: 0").

THEN, I read one - seemingly throw-away - comment made by the developer of that app, saying that you need a clear view of the sky. I step outside, and low-and-behold, not even 30 seconds later, my watch has found over 35 sattelites and I got a location fix. I realise that the forest must have obstructed the view of the sky this morning, which I guess is why it didn't work this morning.

[mrecount00]

I noticed that if I wait for GPS to lock, it will happily keep spinning forever. However, if I press Start without waiting for a GPS lock, it'll start tracking my location within a minute.

[LLY]

Didn't work for me. After 10mins, i just press "start" when i finish and sync to the app, it only shows it as an activity with no routes. So pace and distance is probably off as well. 

[LLY]

I'm also facing this issue recently. Nothing changed for my watch and now on the wellness and Fit app, location lock is not an issue, but i cannot get Strava GPS to lock. 

Please look into this. 

Thanks. 
LY

[ScottM]

There has been no activity on the ticket I created for some time now. I am not holding my breath for a fix. If the issue is with Wear OS on the Fossil watch then there is no chance, especially since Fossil have anounced that they are withdrawing from the Smart Watch market!

[ScottM]

Thank you, I submitted a ticket myself this morning after no responses!

[mrecount00]

Hi any update on this? I have the exact problem.

[ScottM]

I still have a ticket open with support relating to this. In the mean time I manually reinstalled the Wear OS2 app on my old watch and use that for recording activities.

[Jane]

Hi @mrecount00 

Sorry, this issue is ongoing. We're working on solving it as quickly as possible, and I'll post an update here when we know more.  Apologies for the inconvenience.