Fossil Gen 5 Smartwatch - GPS Issues

[dugiehowsa]

Greetings. Over the holiday season, I received a Fossil Gen 5 Smartwatch. One issue I am encountering is with GPS functionality when the watch is not connected to WIFI or connected to the phone via BLUETOOTH. This happens for example when I go out on a run.

My current procedure entails turning WIFI and BLUETOOTH on the Fossil watch off, and placing the watch outside while I wait for the Google Fit app to acquire a GPS signal. This typically takes 3-5 minutes. Then, once the GPS signal is acquired, it tends to toggle back and forth between "GPS Acquired" and "Acquiring GPS". This intermittent GPS connectivity tends to cause some very unusual map generation at the end of the activity, and I also call into question the distance measurement of the app. Is it switching over to the pedometer method of counting steps when the watch does not have GPS connectivity?

Has anyone else experienced issues with GPS connectivity with their Fossil Gen 5 Smartwatch? Has anyone been able to improve GPS performance?

 

[Rukbat]

3-5 minute first acquisition is a bit long. 3-5 minute warm acquisition (it was set up, you have no GPS activity for a while, then ran an app that needed it) would definitely be too long. (Warm start on every GPS receiver I've tried in the last few years is never as long as 10 seconds. I just enabled GPS and ran GPS Status & Toolbox on my Pixel 2 - first cold acquisition was 4 seconds.) Since it's new, I'd check with the vendor about replacing it. (GPS is GPS, whether it's standalone, phone or watch. About the only difference is that the ephemeris
[list of where each satellite is at the moment] may be out of date on a stand-alone GPS.)