Strava dropping GPS.

osarusan

Hi all, this has started happening to me recently.

I changed phones last week and used the new phone twice - both times it messed up, once by autopausing halfway through the ride, and never restarting, the other by just dropping the signal after a km or 2 and picking it up again about 30km later.

I switched back to the old phone, which had done more than 150 rides and more than 4000km and dropped the signal maybe twice at most, but that lost GPS today also.

So I'm wondering if anybody else has noticed anything similar over the past week or so?

magicbastarder

it's usually the phone dropping the GPS to be fair, not strava. strava is just using the phone hardware.

smacl

Batteries have been out on my Garmin Cadence unit for the last couple of days so just running from the GPS signal on the headset. GPS does seem a bit all over the place at the moment and I've seen some big differences riding the same bit of of track in open ground with clear visibility of the sky. This really seems to mess with Strava, which had me descending Cruagh at 65kph last week which was more correctly 55kph when checked in Garmin connect. You'd expect the GPS to be sketchy under tree cover but seems a bit worse at present. Turning on map corrections in Strava helps this.

cletus

A number of friends of mine have stopped using Strava to record their activity because of the Jackson Pollock paintings it has a tendency to draw

smacl

cletus wrote: »

A number of friends of mine have stopped using Strava to record their activity because of the Jackson Pollock paintings it has a tendency to draw

I like it for the goals and that bit of motivation they give you, monthly climbing challenge has been getting me out on days where I really would rather not. The stats seem a bit ropey although they're way better when you've got the combination of GPS and wheel magnet. Nosey type that I am, I also enjoy seeing what other people are up to with their exercise which you don't really get with the likes of Garmin Connect.

magicbastarder

cletus wrote: »

A number of friends of mine have stopped using Strava to record their activity because of the Jackson Pollock paintings it has a tendency to draw

Using their phones or dedicated gps devices?

cletus

magicbastarder wrote: »

Using their phones or dedicated gps devices?

Oh, it's with their phones, and I'd agree with your earlier post.

I link Strava to my Garmin account, and the biggest issue I have is that it records 3.1 mile runs as 3.09 miles about 60% of the time

osarusan

magicbastarder wrote: »

it's usually the phone dropping the GPS to be fair, not strava. strava is just using the phone hardware.

True enough!


Don't have a dedicated GPS device, was just using my phone which worked without fail for so long, then the new one just drops the signal, and I'm riding the same routes I've always ridden.


In that sense it's not so bad as I have all the data already from previous rides so I can manually upload it to a very good degree of accuracy, but it discourages me somewhat from trying new routes, if I won't get them tracked correctly.

km991148

Where is the phone when you ride?
Is it buried in pockets, covered in layers?
What angle?
Maybe the antenna is in a different location?
Could be the old phone was better at holding the signal and the new one needs more help here.



What phone is it exactly?

Thelonious Monk

I was having these issues while jogging, upgrading the OS seemed to solve it

Dowee

The phone's power settings can affect this. If it is on an "eco" or similar mode it can turn off or restrict the use of apps in the background. I don't use my phone for Strava anymore but I used to forget to turn off the eco / power saver mode sbefore going out ometimes and when I did and the run / ride would get very messed up.

osarusan

Just happened again there, dropped after 2 km and didn't pick it up for an hour. It worked me out at an average of 87.9km/hour, so there's that at least!

Phone is the pocket of my tracksuit, same as the old one was. not sure where antenna is on it - today I turned it round so that it was the opposite end up to the previous times. Will see if I can change the power settings and whether that makes a difference.

Phone is just a cheap Alcatel phone, I don't use it for much at all. The old one was a Moto E2, nearly 6 years old but pretty much never lost the GPS connection.

As I said I tried it once since switching to the new phone, and it picked up the signal ok at the start but lost it very quickly. It doesn't have a SIM in it now, but I'm not sure that should make a difference.

magicbastarder

the phone will also triangulate off mobile base stations too, not nearly as accurate as GPS but that'd be one thing you may be missing without a SIM.

at1withmyself

osarusan wrote: »

Just happened again there, dropped after 2 km and didn't pick it up for an hour. It worked me out at an average of 87.9km/hour, so there's that at least!

Phone is the pocket of my tracksuit, same as the old one was. not sure where antenna is on it - today I turned it round so that it was the opposite end up to the previous times. Will see if I can change the power settings and whether that makes a difference.

Phone is just a cheap Alcatel phone, I don't use it for much at all. The old one was a Moto E2, nearly 6 years old but pretty much never lost the GPS connection.

As I said I tried it once since switching to the new phone, and it picked up the signal ok at the start but lost it very quickly. It doesn't have a SIM in it now, but I'm not sure that should make a difference.

You might need to go into the phone settings and allow strava to run in the back ground. I know on my phone I had a similar issue and resolved by allowing permissions to run in background.

DaveyDave

Power settings is most likely. I have to manually manage apps with my Huawei otherwise after about 2 minutes apps will close. Had my head wrecked a few years ago when I was using Google Maps to map a route for a new job and had to keep stopping the bike every few minutes to manually read the map...

ED E

You need to manually protect Strava.

osarusan

ED E wrote: »

You need to manually protect Strava.

Can you explain this to me?

G1032

osarusan wrote: »

Can you explain this to me?

Android kills non system critical apps to save battery, or more specifically, apps open in the 'background'.

You have the option however to prevent Android doing this on whatever apps you choose. You'll just have to allow background activity for Strava.

Go to Settings>Apps>Strava>Battery and select allow background activity so that the app can use battery in the background.

It might be a slightly different navigation path to what's above depending on the phone but that's basically it.

osarusan

G1032 wrote: »

Android kills non system critical apps to save battery, or more specifically, apps open in the 'background'.

You have the option however to prevent Android doing this on whatever apps you choose. You'll just have to allow background activity for Strava.

Go to Settings>Apps>Strava>Battery and select allow background activity so that the app can use battery in the background.

It might be a slightly different navigation path to what's above depending on the phone but that's basically it.

Thanks, there was no setting as specific as that, but Strava was set to 'optimise battery use' and I turned that off (Warning: may drain battery), so hopefully that will do the trick.


There's also no way to allow Strava to 'access location all the time', only 'when the app is running', and if that is combined with the app not running in the background maybe that's the problem.


But i suppose it is running in the background to some extent - when I check it after getting home, it's still running, sometimes getting the total time of ride right but messing up the route/distance, sometimes getting everything wrong, but still running.

ED E

osarusan wrote: »

Thanks, there was no setting as specific as that, but Strava was set to 'optimise battery use' and I turned that off (Warning: may drain battery), so hopefully that will do the trick.

Thats the one.

harringtonp

I'm not surprised. With privacy laws, there are more restrictions coming out for app developers and more safeguards being put into later versions of Android. Getting fine grained location access which is what Strava needs is being made more difficult all the time. As is the ability to run apps reliably in the background.

magicbastarder

it's not a privacy setting, it's a battery life setting?
getting strava to only collect location info when actually set to record (which may or may not be what it does) is distinct from preventing it from collection when it's *not* set to record.

osarusan

Changing the battery settings to allow Strava to keep going without the phone optimising/interfering/shutting it down seems to have done the job alright - recorded the ride perfectly today.


Thanks for the help all.

km991148

Could this be the first cycling issue that was resolved without buying something new?

Glad you got sorted, but, probably best to get a new GPS unit just to be safe :pac: