my apple watch distance is way off

Just an update for anyone following this post or having the same issue. The Apple rep I've been working with left me a vague message about a future software update fixing the issue so I emailed him and asked him some questions, the responses are ridiculous.

Question: are they not doing that tracking that you called to asked me if I would approve?

Response: I am not sure if they applied the tracking they mentioned.

Question: Did they acknowledge that there is an issue tracking distance and the software update will fix it. If so, when will the update occur?

Response: I really don't know when a software update will be out.

I pressed the issue regarding this "tracking". I asked again why would he call to get my permission and then it's not taking place. He now keeps his replies sure short and just says "it's not necessary at this point. It may be down the road".

Are you kidding me! I've spent so much of my time sending them screenshots, repairing, calibrating over and over....and this is the final response I get.

Not really sure where to go from here.

I have had my Watch since early June and the distance is about 10% too long. I have been on the phone with two Senor Tech and have sent a report to them ( clicked on a text message for some type of app.) Today, I was told it would be fixed in a future software update.

Hi everyone,

I may have some good news (i.e. workaround) for those who carry the iPhone with them during their runs.

I received my Apple watch in early May and have been running with it a few times a week and I've noticed the exact same accuracy problem. I also called Apple Care and they don't have any solution for it. I restored the Apple Watch per their instruction and after a few runs it behaved the same as before, which is about 5% or more distance being underestimated.

When I first got my Apple Watch, I ran a known 10K route, with Runkeeper (on iPhone 5S) and a Garmin watch. Garmin showed 10.03K, Runkeeper 10.11K. Apple watch 9.80K. I thought it was my first run, 2% under isn't so bad. It must be learning and calibrating and will be more accurate next time, right? Wrong.

Over time, on the same course 9.80K became 9.45K or even less. On a difference course, the error seemed even greater and it was unpredictable. One lap may seem fairly accurate and the next lap was way off. This was before watchOS 1.0.1, which was supposed to have improved distance tracking. I updated the firmware and it should've improved, right? Wrong again. :-(

On a long run, my Runkeeper number was 21.25K. Apple watch was 20.03K. Assuming Runkeeper was overestimating by 1% (as past experience suggests), Apple watch was still under reporting by 5%!

I called Apple Care and they had me restore the watch as a new watch. The next day I ran a half marathon race and Runkeeper number was 21.39K, and Apple watch was 20.95K. Pretty good! About a 1% under reporting. But of course, over the next week or so, once again accuracy deteriorated back to 5% or more.

I read what people have said in this forum and some suggested that perhaps Apple Watch no longer uses GPS after the initial "calibration run". That gave me an idea. How about I turn off "Motion Calibration & Distance" under Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services? The very thing that Apple asks us to enable in order to help the Apple Watch "learn" our behaviour. Basically, I want to force Apple Watch to perhaps use GPS all the time. Sounds counter intuitive, but what did I have to lose?

Before doing so, I tested a (shorter) course:

Runkeeper: 5.38K. Apple Watch: 5.06K. About 6% under, using Runkeeper as the standard.

After disabling Motion Calibration & Distance:

1st run (of the known 10K course): Apple Watch: 9.65K (3.5% under, compared to about 5.5% before)

2nd run (of the shorter course): Runkeeper: 5.35K. Apple Watch: 5.18K. About 3% under.

Wow. Improved! I did another run, adding a couple more laps to the same course:

3rd run (of the shorter course, but more laps) Runkeeper: 7.34K. Apple Watch: 7.20K. About 2% under!

If Runkeeper is about 1% over as usual, then Apple watch is only about 1% under reporting after 3 runs. Now this is acceptable result!

I will continue to test this but the experiment seems to yield promising results. Disable Motion Calibration & Distance and try it!

Note: I did not try indoor run as I run on the treadmill often.

On my AW I disabled motion calibration but still the indicated distance is way off. As I previously wrote, it's a problem of the native app, not a problem of the watch itself, because if I use Motion-X, which has an app for AW, the distance is accurate.

On my last test I run 10km on another trail whose distance had been measured with a wheel, since that course it's used for trail running competitions.

I had the AW on my left wrist, the Garmin 610 on the right wrist and I was holding the iPhone 6 in my hand. (Pretty unconfortable, but it was the sacrifice required for the test :-)

I launched the AW's native app for outdoor run, and also the Motion-X app, while on the iPhone 6 I launched the Garmin's app (Fit) and at the same time I started my Garmin 610.

Guess what: the distances measured by the AW's Motion-X app, the Garmin FIT app on the iPhone and the Garmin 610 watch were almost the same, plus or minus 20m, which is 0.2% accuracy. Very good, I couldn't ask any better.

But the native AW's application was showing 8.9km, which is over 10% error and it's unacceptable.

My guess is that the native app (at least on my AW) doesn't trigger the the iPhone's GPS, while if I use Motion-X on the same AW it does and is very accurate indeed.

Thanks CFIMarco for the update and for that very accurate test! I drive myself crazy with this watch and using 5 apps every time I run just to validate that the native app on the AW is not working properly. What I don't understand is that when I go mountain biking, the AW seems to be much more accurate than my runs. It's within 1-2% of my bike computer and RunKeeper on my phone. I just hope they fix this with their promised Fall software updates.

I noticed the same thing. It's because apparently the native AW's app, when used on outdoor bicycle mode it triggers the iPhone's GPS, while the Outdoor running mode doesn't. (At least on my Apple Watch)

If it doesn't trigger phone GPS in outdoor running mode, there's a fault. It's supposed to do that, and it does with mine

I agree that it's a fault, but apparently, by reading all the messages, it seems the fault isn't just on mine...

SInce the watch it's the same, the iPhone is the same, the course is the same, I can't see why the Motion-X app on the AW shows accurate distance measurements and the native app (on my AW) doesn't.

Beside, the fact we should run for 20 min. to calibrate it doesn't make sense, unless the calibration has to be done for running without iPhone later on.

NO ONE of the GPS watches (Garmin, Suu to, etc..) or the iPhone has to be calibrated. They work immediately out of the box. That's the beauty of GPS technology. I'm an airline pilot, can you imagine if our navigation FMS (GPS) had to be calibrated to fly JFK to London? It wouldn't make any sense. We just check the coordinates of the departure point, to make sure the position is correct, then we constantly know the estimated position error. That's it and even if it costs thousands of $ less, the iPhone's GPS is as much accurate as the navigation toys we carry aboard. The AW has a seriours software problem on the native app that apparently doesn't affect all the watches but most of them.

The calibration should be for indoor running when GPS data is unavailable. The concept is, by pairing the iPhone GPS data and your running behaviour (cadence, acceleration, etc), the watch can accurate guess your distance when you're running an indoor track or on the treadmill, or running outside without carrying your iPhone. And this calibration would need 20 minutes worth of "data" to be reliable.

My "workaround" of turning off Motion Calibration & Distance has made it more acceptable for me, but I agree it's still not as good as it should be. But at least better in most cases. No more 5%+ errors. I was simply trying to find ways to force the watch to use iPhone GPS in every single run, because the consensus is that after the first run, the watch just relies on itself even when iPhone GPS data is available.

Here's hoping that Apple fixes this issue.

I find it extremely hard to believe this bug wasn't caught before watchOS 1.0, and then 1.0.1. They had Christie Turlington Burns train with it and eventually ran the London Marathon with it. She would've reported inaccurate distances. So there's probably something else with our iPhones or watches that triggers this bug.

I totally agree with you and I'm surprise that since Apple advertised the fitness features of this device as one of the most interesting (if not the most interesting) characteristics of the device itself, didn't fix the bug yet. My watch (if used with native app) is always off by at least 10%, with or without iPhone. This is telling me that it does not use the iPhone's GPS at all on Outdoor Running mode, while it does on Outdoor Cycle mode and of course it uses the GPS when I launch a third party app. With your AW you got a 5% accuracy, which wouldn't be bad for a device using just an accelerometer, but unacceptable for a device supposed to be paired with a GPS receiver. On a Marathon it would make a >2km difference!

Let's see if the will fix the bug with the next update (I doubt it) but it's no surprise to me at this point that the long waited AW is a big flop for Apple.

I have exactly the same issue with my watch. Way off on runs, almost perfect on the bike. I opened a case with apple and after bumping me up to a higher level engineer they came back and said it's a known bug and they are working on a patch. They would not say if it would be fixed in the next release.

I haven't had a chance to test my watch on a run after OS2 came out. Has anyone confirmed whether or not the distance accuracy problem described in this thread has been fixed?

After doing the update Tuesday night, I ran on Wednesday morning and the accuracy was pretty darn good compared to what I thought the route was and the 3rd party apps I was running (Nike, Strava, RunKeeper). 3rd party apps had me at 4.30 and the watch had me at 4.27....I can live with that.

I didn't run on Thursday and I was having other issues (calendar not synced) so I had to go through that whole reset to factory settings, un-pairing scenario. When I ran this morning (Friday) the distance was spot on! 4.5 on all my apps, including the watch. I'm hoping it is fixed and doesn't get worse over time (which has happened to me in the past). Too bad I have many other issues with my watch now!

It's fixed for some, at least.

I went on a 7-mile run this morning on a course that was consistently underestimated by half a mile before. It was spot on the entire time this time, deviating only by .02 at the very end compared to Runkeeper. I'm on watchOS 2 with and iPhone 6s on iOS 9.0.1.