Gadgets and tracking

[The Expert]

So I've been using Runkeeper on my phone an a Samsung Gear S2 watch to track my runs. I've always noticed they differ a bit from one another, but it hasn't been a dramatic enough difference for me to dig into it too much. I just got a pair of Samsung Gear IconX earbuds, and they have the same tracking and heart rate monitor as my watch, so I ditched the watch and its sweaty band and used them today along with Runkeeper on my phone in my belt. The difference in tracking was significant!

The earbuds tracked me at 3.17 miles, and Runkeeper on my phone tracked me at 2.84 miles. I plugged the route into Google and it's pretty close to what the earbuds say. Is it possible Runkeeper has been that far off this whole time? I'm guessing it's not necessarily the app, but the position of the phone on my body as opposed to the earbuds? I need to do a test, starting the watch and earbuds together and see how close they are using the same app and technology, but placed at different points on my body.

I know when I tried Strava on my phone, it tracked differently than Runkeeper, but that's down to technology and not position. I'm just curious if anyone else has played around with this and which placement is the most accurate: wrist, core or head?

 

[IamTrike]

So from a combination of anecdotal evidence and reading here is what I've found. Runkeeper's polling frequency seems to be slightly longer than Strava. If you run with both Strava and Runkeeper running at the same time and Runkeeper is shorter than Strava, you can load the strava map data into runkeeper and you'll see they register the same distance. (as you said this is a technology thing no a position thing)

In terms of position I've found that in general the higher on my body my phone is positioned the more accurate the reading is. Based on that and the fact that you don't have the swinging motion of your arms, I would say head is probably the best position for an accurate reading.

 

[The Expert]

That makes total sense. I've also noticed, thinking back, that when I put my phone in a leg pocket as opposed to my belt, it seems to be slightly more accurate.

 

[cavepig]

I wear my phone running runkeeper on my waist in a belt and it tracks better than if handheld, almost exactly to what the Garmin watch (on my wrist) will say & to a car measuring (the same routes have been measured many times to test).

I've tested phone apps before and the arm swinging can throw the phone apps off. Also, Phone apps use your phones GPS and can be wonky for sure especially if on a bouncy part of the body. My brother used Runkeeper for the marathon at WDW this year on his upper arm and it was way off (like I think it had him at well over 27 miles and he didn't stray from course), but he had already realized his phones GPS was messed up some since in training his paces always came across faster then he knew he was really going.

 

[The Expert]

That's what is weird - I've used my phone with Runkeeper in races before too (in a belt), but it never seemed THAT far off. Of course, I always forget to stop it exactly at the finish line too.

 

[cavepig]

I guess I actually use MapMyRun now. I used to use RunKeeper last fall, oops. Seems usually apps read over the actual distance if they are off so it's interesting that the app is reading longer than the earbuds. It could be your phone GPS being weird. Try MapMyRun or another Run app and see what it comes up with compared to Runkeeper and your earbuds, might help determine if it is really Runkeeper that's off or your actually phone GPS reading wonky.

 

[BuckeyeBama]

I have found phone apps to be worthless when tracking distance on runs. When I wear both my Garmin and carry my phone, my phone app is always off by a margin of about 10% when compared to known distances along roads or trails while the Garmin is always within 1%.

 

[IamTrike]

I wear my phone running runkeeper on my waist in a belt and it tracks better than if handheld, almost exactly to what the Garmin watch (on my wrist) will say & to a car measuring (the same routes have been measured many times to test).

I've tested phone apps before and the arm swinging can throw the phone apps off. Also, Phone apps use your phones GPS and can be wonky for sure especially if on a bouncy part of the body. My brother used Runkeeper for the marathon at WDW this year on his upper arm and it was way off (like I think it had him at well over 27 miles and he didn't stray from course), but he had already realized his phones GPS was messed up some since in training his paces always came across faster then he knew he was really going.

Actually for Marathon weekend that may not be that off. Disney is a really difficult race to run tangents on because it's so crowded. I'm usually in corral C or D with the new corral setup and my Garmin registered 26.85 for the marathon this year. A 1% Margin of error would have put that at 27.11 miles.

 

[cavepig]

Actually for Marathon weekend that may not be that off. Disney is a really difficult race to run tangents on because it's so crowded. I'm usually in corral C or D with the new corral setup and my Garmin registered 26.85 for the marathon this year. A 1% Margin of error would have put that at 27.11 miles.

True! he was in C. Although it did have him running on water once when we looked at his map!

 

[jubjubrsx]

I thought I've read somewhere that phones in particular dont stay sync'd with gps satellites, they check on and off (depending on the refresh rate of the phone) then it calculate the new position; while tech like garmin watches or your earbuds probably stay locked on longer, or never drop the connection. So if you zig zag around it might not catch all of it. that make sense?

I ended up finding that because I experimented one time with my phone in my hand and did a 5k, with my garmin vivoactive HR on the same wrist and my phone actually showed me at roughly 3.1 miles vs my garmin showed 3.25 at the finish line. the garmin tracked all the weaving in and out, thats why it was a bit more.

 

[Anisum]

So this can happen for a number of reasons. The first is AGPS. Some phones still use AGPS or Assisted GPS where the GPS receiver is actually built into a cell tower and your phone pulls that data from the cell tower. This means your data isn't coming directly from the satellite and data is recorded based off your proximity to nearby cell towers. Many companies no longer use AGPS and instead installed dedicated GPS receivers into their devices so this is probably not your issue. The second problem stems from the fact that the quality of these GPS receivers is not on par with a device that is solely dedicated to providing accurate track data. Just like how your phone camera won't outperform an SLR the GPS won't outperform a watch or other running device and since in most cases the GPS in phones is used for directions the small decrease in quality is not a major loss. Plus it provides us all with a reason to spend more money on running tech.

I will say that I often run with my Garmin and my fitbit zip. The zip which is more of an accurate pedometer and I find I get better data depending on where on my body I wear it. The zip can be between +/-0.4 on my 3mile run while the difference between Runkeeper (my running app of choice) is about +/-0.2 miles on a 3 mile run.