Strava and your mobile phone.

[IanSmithCSE]

Good morning,

...... Today, I decided to take a photo with my phone because the scenery was worth it but when I got back home, Strava had stopped working so I lost the record of this ride, Is that a common thing to happen if you use your phone for photographic purposes? .....

Good morning,

It is quite possible that there is nothing wrong with the Strava app and it is a side of effect of apps that sort of misuse mobile phones.

On a desktop computer/laptop when a program say Application 1 needs more memory (RAM) than is available the hard disk is used to save some of the memory being used by another application say Application 2. When Application 2 wants that memory it is reloaded from disc and some of Application 1's memory is written to disk.

Mobile phones don’t do this as they have no hard disc and using the Flash Memory/SD card, if present, is impractical because of speed and to avoid write cycles destroying the memory.

So when an application needs more memory than is available the Operating System (Android/iOS) will ask background apps to release memory, if this still doesn’t result in there being enough memory then the OS may choose to end some of the background apps.

It will do this without a prompting the user and the order in which background apps are closed will probably never be known.

When the background app is next asked for it will be RESTARTED, not carry on from where it was stopped.

The camera is always going to be resource heavy as high resolution images need a lot of RAM to process before saving. HDR photography takes multiple images and merges them into one so this is going to be even worse.

As the camera is part of the phone it is quite likely that the OS will provide special processing to say that if the user wants to use the camera then third party apps must be sacrificed.

It is not just Strava this can happen to, it is also reported by “word processing” type apps losing unsaved documents.

Bye

Ian

 

[pdvm]

Strava on a mobile phone used to be a superb little app for ride recording, uploading and also provided tracking (with subscription) for SO peace of mind. However it has become much less useful since Strava removed the ability for their app to link to other devices (speed, cadence, HRM, power) on bicycles. In my practice, this killed it completely for me. Fortunately I use Wahoo devices which record reliably and sync well with Strava.
The Wahoo phone app is usable and provides tracking but needs a little ritualistic coaxing - and it has to stay connected (and sometimes does not). Thankfully, the Wahoo Bolt or Elemnt device is where the recording actually takes place and rides are not "lost" if the phone dies or looses connection. If auto syncing does not occur at the end of a ride, it is a simple operation of allowing the phone to pair when at home and the rides are then automagically synced.
For tracking, I now use eCrumb from RoadID which I have found to be reliable and is independent from Strava/Wahoo glitches. If I (rarely) really have to have another independent track recording, RWGPS is activiated.

 

[Mike_P]

I don't switch off my Bolt until I see the activity in Strava. If it doesn't happen straight away I open the Wahoo ELEMNT app - this then syncs the workout from the Bolt and subsequently sends it to Strava/RWGPS/Relive etc. All I have to do is open the Wahoo app, no other input required.

Tried that first on Saturday but Strava was not having it.

 

[pawl]

@pawl Maybe logging out/in to Strava and Wahoo might reset things. I uploaded the ride file manually later with no problems.

 

[pawl]

@pawl Maybe logging out/in to Strava and Wahoo might reset things. I uploaded the ride file manually later with no problems.

I switched off wahoo when I got back today .Switched back on and it immediately downloaded to both Strava And Wahoo.The odd thing was when I looked at the record on the I Phone it had only recorded to seven miles A message said it was syncing on the wahoo page There was also a message to update available

 

[icowden]

As usual, I always set up Strava when I go for a ride and this afternoon was no exception, except for one thing. Usually, the phone stays in my back pocket until I am back home and then I stop Strava, Today, I decided to take a photo with my phone because the scenery was worth it but when I got back home, Strava had stopped working so I lost the record of this ride, Is that a common thing to happen if you use your phone for photographic purposes? I have answered calls before on a ride but it didn't affect Strava.
My ride is not entirely lost by the way as my Garmin was on too and I did a manual record on Strava from it too.

Out of interest is your phone iPhone or Android? IOS is fairly poor at multitasking compared to Android. I'm on Android an so far have only lost partial tracking on one ride when Strava "encountered an error".

 

[lazybloke]

Good morning,



Good morning,

It is quite possible that there is nothing wrong with the Strava app and it is a side of effect of apps that sort of misuse mobile phones.

On a desktop computer/laptop when a program say Application 1 needs more memory (RAM) than is available the hard disk is used to save some of the memory being used by another application say Application 2. When Application 2 wants that memory it is reloaded from disc and some of Application 1's memory is written to disk.

Mobile phones don’t do this as they have no hard disc and using the Flash Memory/SD card, if present, is impractical because of speed and to avoid write cycles destroying the memory.

So when an application needs more memory than is available the Operating System (Android/iOS) will ask background apps to release memory, if this still doesn’t result in there being enough memory then the OS may choose to end some of the background apps.

It will do this without a prompting the user and the order in which background apps are closed will probably never be known.

When the background app is next asked for it will be RESTARTED, not carry on from where it was stopped.

The camera is always going to be resource heavy as high resolution images need a lot of RAM to process before saving. HDR photography takes multiple images and merges them into one so this is going to be even worse.

As the camera is part of the phone it is quite likely that the OS will provide special processing to say that if the user wants to use the camera then third party apps must be sacrificed.

It is not just Strava this can happen to, it is also reported by “word processing” type apps losing unsaved documents.

Bye

Ian

I was thinking of low battery.
On my phone (with an old version of Android) the power saving settings can be a bit too aggressive, halting apps when the battery goes below 15%. Is easily fixed by adding Strava to the power saving exclusions list.

I do often see Strava having to reload after i've used a camera or web browser, but I haven't ever seen that cause data loss. Perhaps I've just been lucky, but my assumption is that Strava runs the GPS collection function in a small protected/background process which remains active even when the main application is unloaded. Not sure how to test that theory!

 

[gavroche]

Out of interest is your phone iPhone or Android? IOS is fairly poor at multitasking compared to Android. I'm on Android an so far have only lost partial tracking on one ride when Strava "encountered an error".

Android

 

[wajc]

As usual, I always set up Strava when I go for a ride and this afternoon was no exception, except for one thing. Usually, the phone stays in my back pocket until I am back home and then I stop Strava, Today, I decided to take a photo with my phone because the scenery was worth it but when I got back home, Strava had stopped working so I lost the record of this ride, Is that a common thing to happen if you use your phone for photographic purposes? I have answered calls before on a ride but it didn't affect Strava.
My ride is not entirely lost by the way as my Garmin was on too and I did a manual record on Strava from it too.

I have a Moto G5 (with android 8.1.0) and I run the Strava app on it as a backup to a Garmin that I use. I don't often take photos when I'm out riding but on the odd occasion I have done in the past year or so I have had the issue that you describe. I get the message that 'Strava has recovered from an error' IIRC but it does result in lost ride data.

Looking at a ride I did in 2017 where I took several photos on a ride there was no issue so it seems that it was OK but now is not for some reason.

Next time I'll stop Strava and upload the ride prior to taking any photos and start a new log afterwards. It's easy enough to join tracks later if you want to.