We went out for a run tonight in the rain (I love running in the rain 😁) my friend carried both phones in her running belt.
And guess what? .....STILL discrepancies! Again my phone the one that shows the longer distance, slower pace and more time moving did again. 0.2 miles longer and 2.40 mins longer moving time, also pace was nearly 2mins slower.
So maybe it’s the generation of iphone, mine is a 7 and my friends is a 5.
Next run we are going to introduce another phone, my husbands and measure against that one too. She is going to carry all 3. His is a 6s and o. The same network as mine.
OMG I sound like a right geek 🤓 don’t I? 😂🤣
Then if that doesn’t enable us to draw any conclusions I am going to contact Strava.
Or does anyone else have any suggestions?
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littlemac24
Graduate10
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Does one of the phones have WiFi enabled and one not? WiFi access points help to triangulate the position of a device whose WiFi is turned on. ... Thus, all a phone needs to do is detect various WiFi hotspots in its range, and then its location accuracy improves, because the geographical location of millions of WiFi access points can be obtained from a centralized database.
I think you need to run a known distance to determine which phone is giving the accurate distance
Do you think that the phones’ signals are interfering with each other perhaps, especially all being carried together?
I’ve stopped using my phone app (I used MapMyRun) alongside my Garmin as they were almost a whole kilometer out recently. Someone helpful on here suggested that too much tech can cause issues.
If you do Parkrun, the courses are generally very accurate. Even if you don’t, you could still run a local course yourself if you have one, and compare your Strava against it. Good luck!
Maybe it’s to do with the phone networks as one is BT and mine is o2. Yes we do park runs so we will see then. The last time we ran park run together the distance was the same but time moving and pace was different.... even though we ran together side by side.
Mobile phones do lots of things. Camera, wifi, bluetooth, NFC, GPS, mini PC, motion sensors, accelerometers. To fit this in they have become very adept at making all the components very, very tiny. So the GPS is not going to be very good compared to a specialist running watch or navigation device. Different phones will have better or worse GPS receivers and will also use different software to interpret the signals.
Strava uses it's own software to map the results. This will be different to other apps like Garmin connect, Map my Run etc.
As you are using Strava for all three phones it must be the phones that are different.
The original satellite constellation for global positioning was called NavStar, and was operated by the United States Department of Defense. It has been available for civilian use since the early 1990s, and offers location accuracy of about 10 meters. Like many technologies, the acronym GPS has entered our language and means any system giving location services by satellite, not just the original NavStar.
Of course, other agencies wanted a piece of the action, and so the Russian military introduced GLONASS. And Europe launched (literally) a constellation called Galileo, Japan launched a constellation in quazi-zenith orbit above Japan named QZSS and the Chinese have BeiDou.
The more recent constellations have improved resolution, and so some services offer 1 meter resolution (and combining the technologies with features like WAAS and DGPS can offer 20 cm resolution).
Well, your iPhone 7 is equipped to receive signals from GPS, GLONASS, Galileo (and QZSS but only when you are running in Japan!). Your friend's iPhone 5 supports just GPS and GLONASS.
I suspect that your iPhone7 is actually more accurate. The way that the phone works is by sampling your location every second. When you run a straight road, then the error is simply down to the accuracy of the GPS system (10 meters, for example). But when you run around a corner, the phone does not sample every footstep, just every second. It sees your position and draws a straight line between the 2 points. This has the effect of reducing the distance that you actually travelled (it is longer around the curve).
Your friend's iPhone is older, uses fewer satellites and is less accurate. Her run would look like a series of straight lines. Your phone is more recent, and the location accuracy is improved. Your run would still look like a series of straight lines, but they are shorter and more faithful to the geometry of the path. This all has the effect of making your runs appear longer (strictly, they are more accurate). And since you travelled further, your speed in the same time is lower.
This is all a bit annoying for us, but is a fact of life for GPS. Please try and not be too concerned.
There was a significant gps improvement between iPhone 5 and 6... maybe that’s a factor... but to record more distance and less pace in the same time? That’s weird. If you zoom in on the maps are there any straight lines where there shouldn’t be?
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