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Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

> I wonder if the dual-band GPS on the Apple Watch Ultra is an attempt to fix these problems?

The author said their watch worked fine in the past. It also works fine after a warm up period, which suggests it’s not getting a GPS lock at the start of the workout.

It’s a new issue of either a software regression, hardware degradation, or RF interference near their start point.

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I have just started using an Apple Watch Ultra for running and it does seem more accurate to me. My old Series 6 would underreport distance, e.g. a 5k park run would be measured as 4.9km. I also noticed with the Series 6 that if I did a u-turn that my pace would drop considerably as the watch was presumably missing some of the distance I had travelled whereas the Ultra seems much better in this regard.

I thought this was a well known issue with the Apple watches? They only start looking for a GPS fix once you start the workout, which is the worst time since, well, you already started the workout and are running, making getting that fix that much harder.

I think the Ultra watches now have an option to wait for a fix before starting (which is what always happens on the Garmin's).

Apple Watch uses the iPhone’s gps when the phone is close by.

This is no longer true for Series 8 and Ultra watches. What I’ve not found out is whether this true of any Apple Watch running watchOS 9 or just the latest models.

Watch will use the phones GPS because it has a bigger battery unless you separate them and then it will use it on

The point of the watch is not needing to bring you phone...

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