I have been using HKQuantityTypeIdentifierDistanceWalkingRunning and HKQuantityTypeIdentifierDistanceCycling in my Apple Watch workout app for some time now and whilst they usually work, I often get reports of issues from users which are usually as a result of these distance samples acting very strangely (in several different ways).
What I am wondering is whether or not I should be using these samples for outdoor workouts or if they are mainly intended for indoor workouts? The reason I ask is that for some workouts the pedometer calibration massively affects the distances, even when the user has a good GPS signal.
There are plenty of other issues, such as if users jog during a walk then it often ignores the jogged sections (possibly by design but it confuses users). Also it usually updates every few metres but will sometimes get into a state where it will only update every 2km or so, which is completely unusable.
Has anyone else had problems with it? I also determine the distance from the GPS (after smoothing) and offer the user the choice of either, with the default being to use the HK distance, but I am tempted to just use the GPS distance.
Is anyone else seeing these issues or am I doing something wrong?
