Specialized iPhone App Shows Wrong Elevation Gain.

RGOLD

Member
I don't understand why the iPhone app shows wrong elevation gain compare to the bike display. I attached some photos comparing elevation gain numbers for the same ride.

I texted Specialized US support number (313-468-7347) on Aug 27 regarding this issue but never got a reply back...
 

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The elevation gain as measured by either the e-bike or a smartphone app will always be wrong, and often dramatically wrong.

I assume there is a barometric altimeter in your e-bike, and another in the phone. The e-bike altimeter feeds the information into Mastermind while the Specialized App in the Ride mode certainly uses the phone altimeter, here the discrepancy.

As I said elevation gain given by available barometric altimeters is usually wrong or very wrong. It is because the reference atmospheric pressure cannot be updated by the e-bike or smartphone. It works differently for an airplane: there, the ATC frequently updates the airline pilots with the QNH information; therefore aviation altimeters are very accurate (but only for the altitude of the aircraft above a given airport!) Not the case with the altimeters we use on our rides.

If you want to know the accurate elevation gain, please connect the Specialized App with Strava. In Strava, there is a button for "Adjust/Correct Elevation", and that will adjust the actual elevation gain to the map.

Hope that helps.
 
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as stefan notes, altitude readings of many mobile devices are not very good. who knows what the bike display uses, but in this case it appears to be much closer to reality than the app.

better cycling apps have some options for whether to use the altimeter, GPS, or a combination of those and mapping data to track elevation, but i don't think the specialized app has any choices.

your out and back route on Leif Erikson is around 1,100 feet of elevation per strava, and around 1,300 feet per rideWithGPS, both of which use USGS or other contour maps to determine elevation. it's likely apple workout/maps is using something similar (your 987 foot value) and the bike computer appears to have gotten it basically right.

the 2,451 foot value from specialized is simply completely wrong, indicating that they're likely using only altimeter or only gps, either of which is very very inaccurate. GPS elevation is horrible, and altimeter doesn't work if the air pressure goes up or down much during the ride. using the two together can give a decent result.
 
The issue is simple to fix. The bike displays the correct elevation gain. Specialized needs to fix the phone app to show the same numbers. The total riding elevation gain, since I purchased the bike is ridiculous 52,884...
See attached file.
 

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The issue is simple to fix. The bike displays the correct elevation gain. Specialized needs to fix the phone app to show the same numbers. The total riding elevation gain, since I purchased the bike is ridiculous 52,884...
See attached file.
No doubt this isn’t rocket science, but likely not as simple as you think. We don’t know, for example, if the bike even transmits that data over the Bluetooth link to the phone. We know it transmits power, cadence, lots of things, but they’re mostly based on semi-standard profiles for bikes and other light electric vehicles. I’m not aware that “altitude gain” is one of those things.

And, of course, if it isn’t already transmitted, to make the change requires tweaking many different bikes with many different types of electronics, and modifying the specialized app to know whether to use that data (if the bike has been updated) or the phone’s sensors (if the bike hasn’t.)

alternately, specialized can just use the phone data for location, temperature, altitude, etc, and hope that over the years and across different devices apple, Samsung, Sony, etc will improve their elevation accuracy. (For free…)

a more interesting question is why your altitude data is SO far off on the phone. Between the various apps, computers, bikes, services, etc I’ve used, I’ve not seen such a huge discrepancy. the data is definitely not good, but it’s also not THAT bad.

what kind of phone are you using, what version of the operating system, is it on the handlebars, what settings do you have on location services, etc?
 
No doubt this isn’t rocket science, but likely not as simple as you think. We don’t know, for example, if the bike even transmits that data over the Bluetooth link to the phone. We know it transmits power, cadence, lots of things, but they’re mostly based on semi-standard profiles for bikes and other light electric vehicles. I’m not aware that “altitude gain” is one of those things.

And, of course, if it isn’t already transmitted, to make the change requires tweaking many different bikes with many different types of electronics, and modifying the specialized app to know whether to use that data (if the bike has been updated) or the phone’s sensors (if the bike hasn’t.)

alternately, specialized can just use the phone data for location, temperature, altitude, etc, and hope that over the years and across different devices apple, Samsung, Sony, etc will improve their elevation accuracy. (For free…)

a more interesting question is why your altitude data is SO far off on the phone. Between the various apps, computers, bikes, services, etc I’ve used, I’ve not seen such a huge discrepancy. the data is definitely not good, but it’s also not THAT bad.

what kind of phone are you using, what version of the operating system, is it on the handlebars, what settings do you have on location services, etc?
I'm using iPhone 14, with the latest software updates for both IOS and Specialized. I contacted Specialized support (on Aug 27) via their text message support number, attached the pictures as a problem description but until this day I didn't get any reply back...

My question to Specialized: Why display/record useless data? Why publishing a support number (+1 (303)-468-7347) that you don't bother to reply?
 
I'm using iPhone 14, with the latest software updates for both IOS and Specialized. I contacted Specialized support (on Aug 27) via their text message support number, attached the pictures as a problem description but until this day I didn't get any reply back...

My question to Specialized: Why display/record useless data? Why publishing a support number (+1 (303)-468-7347) that you don't bother to reply?
You could as well ask Garmin or Wahoo why their GPS bike computers collect useless elevation gain data :)

A story, which is a good parallel: It is well known the Wahoo thermometer reports too low ambient temperature but Garmin reports the value too high. Once, I wrote to Wahoo support asking for the temperature discrepancy on its thermometers. The answer was, like, 'our thermometer has the accuracy of 10 F'. Simple like that :) Now,. I know Wahoo is -3 C off during cold weather and -1 C during the summer. Why worry?
 
While the altimeter in a Garmin GPS can't do a very good job of determining absolute altitude, it does calibrate itself at the beginning of a ride and can measure relative altitude gain and loss pretty well (assuming the weather does not change much during the ride). One thing that can also mess it up though is riding in windy weather that creates local fluctuations in the measured atmospheric pressure. I know that my Edge consistently picks up gradual changes in gradient and reports the total gain on favorite routes very consistently.
 
The bike display show fairly accurate altitude number why this number is not transferred to the app like all the other numbers (Speed, Power, Distance etc...)?
 
I've had the same experience with the Specialized app. My understanding is it uses the the barometer built into the iphone. I took the same rides using " Map My Ride" which uses gps data and compared it to the Specialized app on an up to date iphone. The Specialized app typically shows elevation gain that is about twice that of the Map My Ride app. I also have a weather station at home so can see after the rides that there were no significant change in barometric pressure.
From what I have read barometric altimeter reading are supposed to be more accurate than GPS, but the GPS reading in my case is much more realistic. I am guessing that the Specialized app is including very small changes in elevation that it should be ignoring. Like going up 1 foot and back down, which could happen many times over a short distance. I sent an email to Specialized and they said they would look into it but never heard back from them.
 
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