Apple took the wraps off watchOS 5 last week at WWDC, revealing loads of new features that we can look forward to this fall. What I find most exciting about these new features is that I think they hint at a much-needed hardware upgrade coming in Apple Watch Series 4, which is expected to debut this fall.

Apple Watch has always been able to measure the pace and distance of a workout.

On the software side, Apple has already released two major updates to the Apple Watch operating system, adding features like native apps for the watch and interface overhauls. Asus ZE550ML Zenfone 2 Dual Sim Phone with 2GB RAM, 16GB ROM — White There’s a Digital Crown knob on the right edge that you can turn to zoom or scroll through options, or press to return to the main screen.

You can take these watches for a run without your iPhone, and the overall distance recorded will remain very accurate. But when it comes to estimating your current pace during a run, Apple Watch still is not very reliable.

I have found it jumps around unexpectedly during a run, and does not seem very responsive when I speed up or slow down.

It is useful substitute metric to compensate for the lack of an accurate Current Pace reading. Because in order to provide a runner with her Current Pacethe watch must take frequent and accurate real-time sensor readings of how fast she is going at any given moment.

Whereas Rolling Mile Pace allows the watch to calculate an average of hundreds of sensor readings taken over several minutes. Small variances in individual readings disappear when averaged out using that larger data set.

But this increase in accuracy comes at the expense of responsiveness. Why would you want to make such a tradeoff? Perhaps because of limitations with the current hardware.

And I suspect this is the reason why the current crop of Apple Watches struggles so much with pace. To make it a fair fight, I used a meter outdoor running track, so I knew precisely what distance I was running.

I did a series of 1 kilometer test runs 2.

The Activity app is mostly unchanged this time around, with the three, beginner-friendly rings for Move steps , Exercise active minutes and Stand amount of hours in the day where you got up and moved all tracked. Does the apple watch series 2 have gps You can also adjust fitness features in the Watch app on iOS, such as toggling goal notifications and Stand Reminders” or setting how often you get an activity progress update.

However, when I checked the distances reported at the end of each 1 kilometer run, I found that Apple Watch was consistently more accurate — despite the terrible maps.

I puzzled for a long time over how that could be. But I think now I have finally worked out the reason. A GPS sample is a location, measured in coordinates of latitude and longitude, showing where you were at a specific moment during your workout.

In other words, a sample is like a dot on a map. With enough samples, you can join the dots to plot the workout route. The accuracy of the map is dependent on the accuracy of those samples.

25.02.2020 – Wareable verdict: Apple Watch Series 3 review But it’s not ignoring those who’d prefer to steer clear of a gym. With Passbook integration, you can quickly pull up your plane tickets, boarding passes and loyalty cards without having to get out your phone. While there are some nuanced differences, you’d pretty much have to put the Apple Watch Series 1 and 2 side-by-side to notice the difference. Apple is imposing some order on watch-compatible accessories by launching a Made for Apple Watch program. Sales are slow at present but it may only take four years for 5G to become the new standard.

That means you can see precisely where and when each sample was taken. Finally got my hands on an AppleWatchSeries3.

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Disappointed to discover the GPS still sucks. I made this animation to show just how bad it is pic. I uploaded workouts from three different watches, and found the frequency of samples varied considerably:.

In other words, every second during my workout, my TomTom was plotting a point on the map.

Apple Watch Series 2 FAQ: Everything you need to know about the second-gen Watch | Macworld

Whereas Apple Watch only plotted a point on the map every four seconds. So my TomTom collected four times as much route data. No wonder the maps look more accurate.

But there is more.

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That suggests to me that the TomTom not only gathers a greater quantity of samples, but that those samples are also more accurate. I think this has to do with the Apple mathematical wizardry that I mentioned earlier.

Then, it relied on just the accelerometer to pick up on things like your cadence and changes in momentum. It was not very accurate, but it was still pretty remarkable that it worked at all, when you consider how little data it had to go on.

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Apple has been developing this kind of system for a very long time. I suspect Apple Watch still uses this system, but now in combination with GPS samples, to estimate your distance.

Apple also uses additional processing to smooth out the glitches in its GPS route maps.

The company explained this at WWDC last year. That is presumably why it takes a few moments for the maps to appear when you view them in the Activity app.

But sometimes it proves much more effective.

How does the Apple Watch GPS work? – Apple Community

For example, when I ran the New York Marathon with my Series 2the route map initially appeared to be a complete mess. But after a couple of minutes, most of those glitches vanished, as if by magic.

The delay is far more noticeable on longer runs like a marathon, because there is so much more data to process. To measure this accurately requires frequent, accurate real-time GPS samples, which I suspect only new hardware can deliver.

This could be why watchOS 5 is focusing on current pace, a metric that Apple would not previously have wanted to highlight. This could also explain why Apple is introducing the Rolling Mile Pace at the same time — to placate Series owners, who might be disappointed with the accuracy of Custom Pace Alerts.

Perhaps this is all just wishful thinking on my part.

I love my Apple Watch because it looks way cooler than any running watch I ever owned before. I also appreciate all its other smartwatch features like notifications and messaging.

Plus, in this age of privacy scares, I trust Apple far more with my workout data than anyone else. In my opinion, the accuracy of GPS and current pace is the one hardware limitation still holding back Apple Watch.

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Smartwatches overall are relatively young, and learning how people want to use their wearables will make all the difference in whether they sink or swim. Does the apple watch series 2 have gps Apple also uses additional processing to smooth out the glitches in its GPS route maps.