iPhone XR and going out for a walk...

[rlw]

Me and mrsrlw have indentical iPhones. When we go out for a walk together, she will invariably have taken more steps than me but will also have covered more distance. This is confusing as I thought distance was calculated on gps.

Anyone know any better?

[BlueJazz]

Is she shorter than you and therefore takes more steps which are counted by the phone using other sensors, as well as the GPS?

[ffc]

More steps is simply stride length so how long are her legs by comparison with yours. No idea about distance though.

[The_Jackal]

It probably guesstimates distance by the number of steps rather than pure gps distance.
If it was just gps distance they wouldnt be that different.

[anonymous-user]

Is she on the outside going round bends?

[wiggy001]

rlw said:

Me and mrsrlw have indentical iPhones. When we go out for a walk together, she will invariably have taken more steps than me but will also have covered more distance. This is confusing as I thought distance was calculated on gps.

Anyone know any better?

iPhone uses the g sensor to detect “steps” afaik

[CoolHands]

Swap phones and see if it persists

[Getragdogleg]

Swap phones every other walk to keep the averages correct.

[Piginapoke]

Have you tried not caring?

[Brainpox]

Does she walk on the outside of the circular loop you walk on?

[RichTT]

I don't think the steps to distance calculation takes into account stride length. So if she's shorted legged than you then inevitably over the same real distance she will have performed more steps. To the iPhone more steps = more distance based probably on an average height to stride length.

[rlw]

CoolHands said:

Swap phones and see if it persists

Brilliant. We'll try that.

Step lengths, height, width, weight etc are all in and make sense but the distance.........

[rlw]

JPJPJP said:

Is she on the outside going round bends?

Invariably not as she favours the racing line............

[WyrleyD]

We use the Nike Run Club (NRC) app on the iPhone XR to map and record our walks, lots of info available at the end of the walk.