iPhone 6 with Health App / Cycling tracking broken?

My iPhone 6+ only counts bicycling as steps when I keep it in my pants pocket while cycling. If the phone is in a bag on the bike itself, no steps are detected. I haven't tried yet keeping it on my person, but not in the pant pockets (e.g. In the shirt, or in the jacket), but I would expect it to work fine as well.

tinue wrote:

My iPhone 6+ only counts bicycling as steps when I keep it in my pants pocket while cycling. If the phone is in a bag on the bike itself, no steps are detected. I haven't tried yet keeping it on my person, but not in the pant pockets (e.g. In the shirt, or in the jacket), but I would expect it to work fine as well.

I Keep the phone in my shirt pocket (on the side) and I think there's a relatively low error margin on steps taken. However, there's a big flaw in the "flights climbed" area. I assure you I did not climb 57 flights today... But bike some hills, I did.

I've started tracking with Cyclemeter, which syncs to health just fine, but like others I'd find it quite nice if it didn't think I was trotting up and down stairs the whole time I was simultaneously on a bike.

The really annoying aspect of this is that you can't tell health kit to ignore the iPhone M8 step or flights data. You can tell it to ignore data from all other apps or select which specific data you want to get from the app, but can't disable the one source that gets it wrong all the time. For my part I would rather use another app, like Human, to record my steps and have no automatic adding of the data from M8. At least with something like Human you can edit the data to remove/correct any stupid assumptions.

I use Wahoo Fitness to record all my cycling and export to Strava and Training peaks from there. Wahoo have managed to integrate very well with Health Kit and I have had no issues with missing data.

Bump. - Any luck with the lates iOS (8.4)?

Doesn't look like it. iPhone is definitely counting cycling as steps. I just took at 15 mile ride this morning with the phone *in my seat bag* (not on me), which was logged as 15 miles of cycling by Strava and about 3,700 steps by iPhone. I did, however, have Health set to allow Strava to write walking/running, so I turned that off and took a short 1.5 mile test ride, which still logged about 130 steps. Not sure why that should make a difference anyway because I was logging cycling in Strava, not running.

The difference in my 15 mile run and my 1.5 mile test run, if I extrapolated that to 15 miles, would come to about 2,400 steps, so there may have been some improvement by setting the walking/running to off, but not sure why. I'll try again next time I go on a long ride. Regardless, it's definitely sloppiness on either Strava's or Apple's part -- I'm betting iPhone -- but still inexcusable of Apple to log multiple simultaneous activities like that. They should do better, and they certainly know about this issue.

Nothing's changed for me, my iPhone 6 still thinks I walk a very long way when I'm bike riding! Additionally I have a new iPhone (only a few weeks old) after experiencing an intermittent problem with loss of sound after turning off my previous phone. So that would seem to eliminate my iPhone as the 'problem' source. Back to Mr Apple to fix this.

HI Everybody!

M8 or later sees the difference between walking, running and bicycling so it doesnt count riding a bike as walking or running. How can it log distance if vertical motion is not related in any way with horizontal one? Walking/running is different. Lengh of your legs (approx) and gyroscope readings are roughly calculated as steps. On bicycle it will change as horizontal motion is unknown and vertical is uneven (bumps on the road). For bike log you need location readings Such as gps.

i hope this explains the topic.

Chris

Hi everyone

The app is not able to detect bicycle ride on a iPhone6s [iOS9.0.2] too :-(

That's really annoying!

D.

Iphone 5s/6/6s will never log bicycle ride with GPS logging off. Download bicycling app and run it it the background.

Expect low battery life as GPS drains it in 2-4 hours.

The battery comment is not right - recent iPhones (& other smartphones - this change is in the ARM processor design) use a separate processor dedicated to GPS logging and the impact on battery life is correspondingly modest. Several hours of background use should be fine (you do of course have to have the phone in sleep with the app in the background).

It is less clear that the phone (or watch) could not automatically detect cycling as an activity based upon speed of movement etc. , just as it does paces for example, but I agree neither the phone nor the watch actually does. Mine are connected to Strava but this is flaky as well documented elsewhere (that Strava is OK and perhaps the Activity app is too but the Health app misses it). The Withings app is better. Presumably to be fixed in a future upgrade....

Yes...no cycling tracking in health. I just got my iPhone 6s and tried today. It doesnt work. Why there is no comment from iPhone guys reading these notes?

shmiusa wrote:

Yes...no cycling tracking in health. I just got my iPhone 6s and tried today. It doesnt work. Why there is no comment from iPhone guys reading these notes?

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I just talked with Apple care and they said that a third party app is required to introduce data into Health kit.

Fixar Frazze wrote:

I just talked with Apple care and they said that a third party app is required to introduce data into Health kit.

That depends on which phone and which data. iPhones from the 5S on can track steps without any third party apps. iPhones from the 6 on can track cycling without a third party app.

OK i see now that my reply is missing some essential info. I meant to say: Apple Care says that in order to record cycle data in health kit (automatically) one has to use a third party app.