S Health cycling off by 5 miles!!!

[dusty78]

So recently I noticed that when I use S Health for cycling it seems like it's inflating my distances. So today I decided to run S Health and Strava simultaneously. I use my Gear 2 for both within starts each app. The difference was pretty staggering. It wasn't like this on my last S5? I had to swap it out due to the bluetooth not working properly. I'm guessing it's not the GPS because Strava uses the same GPS and works fine. Any ideas?

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[walhalla]

Wow, that is a big difference. I use CycleDroid, have not tried S Health cycling. I am scheduled to go riding this weekend. Think I'll try both of them and compare the results.

 

[fleckrj]

I have not tried using my 5S as a cycling computer, but I have a friend who had a similar experience when using an iPhone compared to the Garmin Edge 305. I will download the programs you named and compare them to my Garmin Edge next week.

 

[Fastfwd]

I haven’t been using the S Health myself either. Originally I gave it up because I don’t believe you could switch over and check your heart rate while riding if it was on (I don’t have a Gear device). Maybe I just never figured it out before I stopped using it.

I’ve used Map My Ride since I started riding again and Strava soon afterward and they both register fairly consistently close measurements – within tenths of a mile difference usually. Their numbers are usually pretty spot on with my cycling computer.

I do notice that maybe Strava either doesn’t have the option or I haven’t found it to ‘auto pause’ like the Map My Ride app and that sometimes will create a big difference in average speed and time numbers if I’m goofing around while I’m out riding.

Sorry, no insight to what you are seeing though I suppose. I’m hooked on these apps though. It’s pretty creepy to see how much detail your phone can provide on you to the government, but they are great for logging your workout and providing a benchmark to improve upon, etc.

I’ll try using my S Health cycling function the next few times out and see if I notice any discrepancy.

 

[OJsakila]

I would like to hear from people that have used this app extensively.. I have used the pedometer at work (I walk a lot on a golf course) and it appears to be operating properly. it only counts my steps and stops as soon as I hop on a cart..

either way, I would like to hear more from people using this entire "health" app..

 

[Fastfwd]

Fired up S Health last night with the others

Pretty tight with my other apps.

Looks like it isn't 'pausing' like maybe I figured out how to turn on with Strava that my Map My Ride has always done - so, my time and average speed are down. I need all the help I can get to make my average speed look more respectable. Distance was spot on though.

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[Fastfwd]

Mine are accurate

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[fleckrj]

I compared my Garmin Edge 305 to S Health on a 21 mile ride. According to Bikeroutetoaster, which has always been very accurate, the ride was 21.0 miles with 517 feet elevation gain, minimum elevation 236 feet, and maximum elevation 431 feet. The Garmin Edge 305 matched the distance and minimum and maximum elevations very closely at 21.06 miles, 253 feet, and 442 feet; however, it had the elevation gain as 795 feet. S Health had the distance at 19.83 miles and the minimum and maximum elevations at 308 feet and 525 feet. S Health does not give elevation gain - just the distances of ascent (1.05 miles) and decent (0.81 miles).

I think the Garmin messed up on elevation gain because it works off barometric pressure, and we had some storms in the area, which would have caused pressure changes during the ride. We only rode through one brief shower, but on the return portion of the trip, we saw that there had been some heavy rain, but not while we were there. I am not sure how S Health determines elevation. Bikeroutetoaster uses USGS data, so again, it is pretty accurate.

The Garmin had the average speed at 12.6 mph, and S Health had it at 9.7 mph. I can contribute that difference to the time spent stopped while we waited for one of the members of the group to catch up.

I had downloaded CycleDroid, but when I started S Health, I inadvertently stopped CycleDroid, so I cannot tell whether the difference between the Garmin and S Health has to do with the sensitivity of the GPS on each device or the S Health software.

 

[walkerdog]

I've used the walking part of S Health and it was off by 1.3 miles. I walked 4 miles according to google maps and only 2.7 according to S Health. I thought they used google maps? Guess I'm going back to Body Media. Not sure why it's so different.

 

[fleckrj]

This week I compared CycleDroid to my Garmin on the same 21 mile route from my previous post. The Garmin measured 21.03 miles with 793 feet of elevation gain, 756 feet of elevation loss, 246 feet minimum elevation, and 442 feet maximum elevation. Again, this is very close to the values from Bikeroutetoaster.com, which I think is accurate. The average speed was 13.0 mph (don't laugh, I am 62 years old ), and the maximum speed was 28.4 mph.

According to CycleDroid, the distance was 21.48 miles, with an average speed of 13.3 mph and a maximum speed of 27.8 mph. This is closer to the real numbers than what I got with S Health, but the altitude made absolutely no sense. According to CycleDroid, the ascending was 2772 feet, the descending was 2572 feet, the minimum was 82 feet, and the maximum was 351 feet. The real values should be close to 517 feet ascending, 517 feet descending, 236 feet minimum, and 431 feet maximum.

 

[LoneRider191]

My $.02 worth involves riding twice with S-Health cycling, the first of those two times with CycleDroid operating in parallel (on the same Galaxy S5 phone). In the first ride (27.5 miles in 108 minutes), S-Health ended up with good screen data at the end (i.e., distance, average speed, etc.) *but* the audio announcement of average speed was about 1/3 too low (e.g., when I knew I was making a 15 mph average from my cycle computer, it would say something like 10.4 mph). I don't know how it could screw up the obviously correct internal data in the translation to the audio output, but it did. CycleDroid simply dropped out for several miles and then clicked in again (no pauses in this entire ride). Neither of these results was acceptable.

For the second ride I used S-Health only and the distance was exactly 20 miles (I've measured it many times with independent GPS as well as my calibrated cycle computer) and around mile 8 or 9, S-Health just started outputting the "distance to go" as one mile more than it really was (so the distance already covered was exactly 1 mile less). Also, the time of ride changed by -4 minutes 21 seconds. So when I finished my 20 mile ride, it said 19 miles had been covered and the average speed given was 9.4 mph but my cycle computer gave a (correct) speed average of 15.9 mph. Also, the total distance shown on the screen time (along with the time of ride) was incorrect... so it wasn't just a problem with the audio output.

Both apps are non-reliable, in my opinion, based on these experiences, and I won't use either of them again. Very hard to understand how this (S-Health) software could become so buggy, if it was good before (this was my first use of either of these two apps).

 

[Katcheer11]

I have used S health for 3 months, and i also think it added 5 miles to my ride at least twice. I just did a quick mile count and it seems i rode 10 miles 3 days in a row, which i am sure i have never done (those should have been 2 5 miles). So other than those 2 times in July, it looks accurate.