Hi all,

So I recently bought a Solar instinct. It’s good – the GPS accuracy is outstanding, as good as my handhelds. BUT, my phone is very patchy and unreliable. Connectd up a state-of-the-art GPS, you’d expect Explore, other mapping apps, to use the coords of the GPS, but instead relies on the phone’s inaccurate receiver. This seems really stupid – am I doing something wrong? OK, I don’t expect Google maps to have this built in (i.e. using a different GPS signal), but surely Garmin Explore App should do!?

Any ideas?
Thanks,
FM.

There is a feature called connected GPS but that is to go the other way and use phone GPS on a watch. Not seen what you describe, although I’m also struggling to see a use for it.

See a use for what I suggested? If you’re asking that: to have 100% accurate GPS on my phone (from my watch signal). At the moment I have to save my loc. on the watch and wait until the marker pops up on Explore to see where I am on the map. I’m talking about the little blue arrow which represents your current location (usually wobbling around the nearest town in my case, which makes me think my phone GPS might be faulty and its going off the nearest cell tower?).

You’ll likely have better GPS on your phone than your watch. Newer phones can exploit dual-band signals, throw more computing power at the job, and can leverage their GSM calculated position too.

Your use case seems pretty niche.

I’d be surprised if anything existed to do it with any GPS watch, and I doubt it’s possible with an Instinct (no 3rd party app support).

Yeah, I’m struggling to see why you’d want to do this, but (as above) the GPS accuracy on modern phones is pretty good so I’m not sure how much more “accurate” a signal from a watch would be.

I notice within app permissions in explore there is an option to share location. It’s a bit vague as to what it does but I’d at least make sure that is on

On my phone, it’s rubbish.

IME phone gps is ok, but slow response, so when moving at speed it takes a few seconds to update location. Garmin watch gps updates noticeably quicker. I put this down to the phone’s processor trying to juggle a myriad of tasks, and probably prioritising some things ahead of gps location. All the watch has to do is tell the time and measure my heartbeat whilst working out where I am.

You do realise that Garmin sells watches with built in mapping for exactly this purpose, don’t you?

Phone gps is crap compared even to my older garmin watch.
Watch (and edge 530) screen is crap for viewing maps
I can see benefits here.

Yes for 700 quid they do.

@seriousrikk, yes exactly! I use the basic navigation on the watch but sometimes need to double check things on the phone.

Yes for 700 quid they do.

Well, my Forerunner 945 didn’t cost anywhere near that and includes mapping, but the point I’m making is that they’d have much less sales of higher cost watches if you idea worked! Wouldn’t make good business sense for them 😉

Well, my Forerunner 945 didn’t cost anywhere near that and includes mapping, but the point I’m making is that they’d have much less sales of higher cost watches if you idea worked!

Nah. People don’t buy watches with maps because their phone gps sucks.

Garmin watch gps updates noticeably quicker. I put this down to the phone’s processor trying to juggle a myriad of tasks, and probably prioritising some things ahead of gps location

That’s not how it works. In the app you’re using to record your activity make sure you have it set to record data points every second.

GPS calculations are offloaded on to a separate processor so it’s really got nothing to do with what your phone is thinking about. In comparison the processor in the watch is so anemic due to power saving that it’s all it can do to record GPS.

I’m talking about the little blue arrow which represents your current location (usually wobbling around the nearest town in my case, which makes me think my phone GPS might be faulty and its going off the nearest cell tower?).

Yes, sounds like there is a problem with the phone GPS. If you turn off GPS in the phone, might that force the app to use the watch GPS?

I Googled your question and it does seem that watch GPS is often better than phone GPS, but I can only find ways to do the transfer the other way, ie, use the phone GPS on a watch that doesn’t have it.

This probably won’t help, but Garmin actually sells a standalone GPS receiver which you can bluetooth to your phone. I have an earlier version of this which I occasionally used to run Viewranger on an iPad Mini Worked fine.

https://www.garmin.com/en-GB/p/645104

My phone GPS is as good as my watch one, as long as it’s kept in a position where it can see the sky. It could be that the OP has a shit phone, or it’s broken, or some kind of power saving settings are turned on (search for GPS accuracy in the settings).

I’m talking about the little blue arrow which represents your current location (usually wobbling around the nearest town in my case, which makes me think my phone GPS might be faulty and its going off the nearest cell tower?).

I just turned off wifi and the blue circle on Google Maps covers my house, next door (this is a semi) and the driveway opposite but the spot is actually dead on according to the map. And it claims accuracy is low. I’m inside.