Health App

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Is there any way to calibrate the Health App walking/running steps program? It seem horribly inaccurate based only on the height of a person if that's the way it works?

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IWT


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Basically, you calibrate it to your stride by walking for 20 minutes with the GPS having a signal. The step sensor then calculates your personal stride length from the distance covered.
 
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No, the phone will detect strides and do the work for you. Just start a workout and go walking for 20 minutes with the phone in your pocket.
 
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OK, sounds simple enough. So presumably it self calibrates every time it's used when it has a GPS signal, probably most of the time!
 
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However it calibrates (or not) whenever we are travelling together my wife always manages to do around 1500-2000 more steps in a day and up to 2 km further even though we are together. I suspect because my phone is in a trouser pocket and hers in a handbag.
 
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I can understand the more steps, your wife has probably got shorter legs, but the distance traveled should be the same. Bit Mickey Mouse me thinks.
 
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That could be it. The phone detects steps by a motion of the iPhone. To see it in action, hold the phone in one hand, on edge and with the short side pointed down. Now shake it (not violently) by flexing your wrist up and down so that it moves like it would in your pocket. You can see the step counter go up with the motion. So in your pocket it doesn't see as much shaking as in her purse, which probably moves more.

I'm not sure it recalibrates every time. I think you have to be 3+mph for 20 minutes to do the calibration.
 
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I can understand the more steps, your wife has probably got shorter legs, but the distance traveled should be the same. Bit Mickey Mouse me thinks.
Well, think about it. Before calibration it uses a "standard" stride length of some amount. If one of them has not calibrated, the pedometer uses that standard length to calculate distance. So, she gets more steps, thus more distance, and the calibration may either exacerbate or mitigate the difference.
 
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Most step trackers (Fitbit, Garmin, etc) allow the user to enter their stride length as well as height and weight.

Of course, these are a lot less expensive than an iPhone - so it seems reasonable to expect Apple to automate that in some way.

Incidentally, I have tried several Fitbit and Garmin trackers and they are all widely different in their accuracy. Let us hope the iPhone is more accurate :)
 

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