Can the Apple Watch Series 3 map a run on the GPS alone?

That wasn’t the watch over reporting. A race is measured on the “racing line.” If you follow the perfect line through every corner and run the route along its shortest possible distance, it will be 13.1 miles. Almost no one runs this ideal racing line. Your finish distance is in the expected range for an organized race with lots of runners keeping you off the ideal line. This article does a good job of explaining it.

The AWS3 does use GPS when you are doing an outside running activity. I run extensively and run with a Garmin GPS watch on one arm and the Series 3 on the other. They report almost the exact same mileage over any given distance (and by exact, I mean down to the hundredth).

Good Morning.

You may want to read the user’s guide to help you decide.

http://help.apple.com/watch/#/apda40d70599

A lot of useful info for fitness can be found here.

Get the most accurate measurements using your Apple Watch - Apple Support

And here.

Work out with your Apple Watch - Apple Support

I own a Series 2 and use it to run sans my iPhone all the time. It holds all the music I need and gathers all the fitness and GPS data while away from my iPhone. When it gets connected back with my phone, the data is sync back and forth and map details are added to the run.

Now this works with Apple’s own fitness app out of the box but not with all third party apps, like MapMyRun or NRC, you’ll have to check what is supported with your favorite app. Be careful, even though some apps mention the ability to use without a phone it is sometimes clunky or not quite true. If you need info on a specific app I tried let me know.

Good luck,

S.

I have recently purchased an Apple Watch Series 3 GPS only and the issue I have is that last Sunday I ran a half marathon and the watch 'over recorded' for every mile which meant that when I finished the 13.1 miles, the watch had recorded 13.4 miles although when uploaded into Strava, the route was exactly the right route.

I have read a lot about calibrating and am confused. I can't believe that the watch only uses its pedometer feature to record real-time running stats. Surely the watch relies on GPS (after all isn't that the point of having GPS in a 'Running Watch'?), to record the real-time data?

Is Apple going to fix this problem or is this something that is wrong with my watch (and by the looks of things from various other posts lots of other watches)?