I’ve been using the Strava app on my iPhone till I can afford/justify a decent, dedicated GPS device. I know some folk record their rides in MotionX, then upload the GPX file to Strava, instead of using Strava to record it. Is there any befefit to this? Is Motion X more accurate or better at ‘pausing’ when you stop etc?

Strava app records every 4 seconds I think

Motion x probably records every 1 second.

I use the wahoo app and then upload to strava as it works better with external sensors.

Jebus! Big difference between 4 seconds and 1. Would probably use it just for that.

Wait, What’s this I here about 4 seconds? what does that even mean? Try runtastic mountain biking, used that in the past seems pretty accurate.

So, ignoring GPS/device inaccuracies for now, a Strava section could be almost 8 seconds adrift (4s at start, 4s at end) if you are unlucky with your timings????

Using motion x means you can export the GPX file. I think you can only do that with strava if you’re a premium user.
You can also download the map tiles for motion x on wifi before heading out so you have a basic map

Recording intervals vary between devices – for example, the mobile app records every 3-4 seconds while Garmins usually use smart recording which has a varied recording interval. Segment matching works the same on each GPS dataset, but depending on the unique data and recording interval, can yield different results. Segment matching uses the GPS points in the data closest to the start and endpoints of the segment, and as this can vary with each activity, timing on a segment can vary slightly because of this. At the present time, we don’t interpolate or extrapolate GPS data to normalize for the exact start and end positions of the segment.

My understanding is the Strava app uses 1s intervals now, certainly on my iPhone 5 it does. It did used to be 4s, but I think they changed it now, maybe not on all phones.

Don’t need to be premium user to import GPX files to Strava, you just email the file to them from your registered email address. WIll run both for a bit and see if there’s any difference.