Samsung Gear S3 works fine, The S-Health app also works fine. The only thing is the working concept is not clearly understood by some people and not well explained by Samsung itself. If your Samsung Gear S3 has problem tracking your location or distance during cycling or walking activities, here how to solve that:
Condition 1: Your Gear S3 is paired to Phone vie Bluetooth.
In this situation your Gear S3 will rely the location information from your phone.
You do not have to change any setting in your gear S3 ( Bluetooth still on, Wireless on, Location mode GPS & wireless, autopause on) Make sure your phone Location setting is set to "On" and at "highest accuracy" mode. It means enable all GPS, WiFi and wireless networks for location searching from your phone.
Make sure your phone is not in "Power Saving" mode, because it limits the location tracking ability from your phone.
In this way your gear S3 can track your location, map your distance, and generate the route correctly.
Even autopause works correctly and precisely.
Any location tracking faulty in this situation is mostly your phone location tracking faulty.
(You can test your phone tracking problem by running with your phone and S-Health app installed on it separately from your Gear S3)
Condition 2: Your Gear S3 is disconnected from the phone (stand alone)
In case you are not sure your phone can track location correctly in certain condition or you want to save your phone battery, disconnect your Gear from the phone. (Bluetooth Off, Wirelss Off, Location On- GPS & wireless / GPS only, or just simply press flight mode)
In stand alone mode, your Gear S3 will rely on its own GPS.
In this way your gear S3 can track your location, map your distance, and generate the route correctly (without detailed maps).
Even autopause works correctly and precisely.
The cycling and walking data will be synced to your phone after it is connected again.
Before starting your activity, make sure Gear's GPS has found your location. At the first time you are using "standalone" mode, Gear may need some time (around 1-3 minutes) for GPS to locate your position. The small location (balloon) icon is blinking when searching and turns solid when it has found your location. Once is done, next time you use standalone GPS mode, it will locate you quickly.
At the first time you are using "standalone" mode after switching from phone connected mode, it's a good practice to restart your watch especially if it takes too long to find your location at first.
I hope this helps. I have tested it consistently on my Gear S3 Frontier, and my phone is Samsung Galaxy S6.
