Watch Steps Are Inaccurate...

You are missing the point, it doesn't count them (as your phone does) it calculates them, it isn't possible for your watch on your wrist to count how many times your leg moves.

I believe there's an accelerometer in the watch which has a go at estimating steps from arm movement.

It can vary quite a bit - if you keep your hands in your pockets (stop slouching boy! 🙂 ) or, as in one case here, are pushing a baby stroller, for example, the readings are off.

According to Apple, if you've used the watch with the phone a few times, the watch has an estimate of your stride length, which it uses if it's out unaccompanied by the phone to estimate distance. I infer it estimates the distance from stride x number of steps

But I might be wrong

I have calibrated my watch many times also. I look at when exactly my steps were counted. I collected more than 2000 steps while I sat in front of the computer typing and moving my arms around at my desk. It was quite accurate up until a couple of updates ago.

Your watch doesn't count your steps.

What makes you say that

I don't have the watch, yet. But I have gotten double counts in the Health area of my iPhone 6 plus. It was because I had the Strava app Walking Distance turned on and the Apple Settings>Privacy>Motion & Fitness>Fitness Tracking turned on. After turning off the Strava Walking option all was good! Strava uses the GPS for bike riding, so they may use it for walking also, but I've never tested it by walking on a treadmill to find out. But, you may have another app running that adds to the Healt app at the same time the apple Fitness data like what I think happened to me. Good luck finding the cause!

nick101 wrote:

..... But I might be wrong

I doubt you are, that's more or less what I think is happening.

1957Goldtop wrote:

Actually, you're missing the point... do you really think your iPhone knows how many times your leg moves?

You have clearly decided to be argumentative about this. Both devices are clearly stating the total steps by calculation, but do you really expect me to believe that you really believe it won't be much easier for a device that sits in your pocket as opposed to the one on your wrist. On a very crude assessment a 1:1 count for back/forth movement from a phone in your pocket may well be quite accurate in most cases, but walking with your hands in your pocket or staying in one spot whilst performing CPR are likely to cause issues for the watch that a phone in the pocket won't experience. You know exactly what I mean.

Put on your watch. Walk around the block and leave your iPhone behind. Watch your step count in the activity app increase. What makes you think it doesn't?

I use the Strava app for cycling and walking, it never doubles my distance.

So weather you want to believe that a phone in your pocket can't be more accurate that a watch on your wrist, that is your own issue. I however have definitive proof for my particular watch and my particular iPhone.

I'm not so sure that you aren't allowing your annoyance at me to cloud your ability to read my comments properly. Of course I believe you that your phone is more accurate, my point is that logically it will be and that your observations are far from surprising.

However the good news as I understand things is that your watch will learn from your phone and become more accurate overtime.

hi Wilson,, Like I stated I haven't got the Apple watch yet. On my iPhone 6 Strava works perfect as its own app. But, it doesn't send my Cycle data up to the HealthKit. Strava has I has a note in their Knowledge support saying that some get it and some don't. They think they found the bug and it says there will be an undate in the near future.

Fortunately I just use the Strava app by itself to so all is great! But, if the Watch uses the same HealthKit I hope the fix comes before my Watch!