My phone detects going on a run as “someone snatching my phone and running off”
mastodon.gamedev.placeAdding “running” to the list of things that Google engineers apparently don’t do.
Where it joins “walking”. Google Maps will suggest almost arbitrarily bonkers public transport directions to avoid walking. Personal favourite: the sensible way to get from my house to work, unless the weather is terrible, is six minutes on a train and a 15 min walk. Google Maps would, generally, prefer that I spend 15 mins on the train going mostly the wrong direction and 15 minutes on a tram, then a five minute walk. It will also contemplate a ten minute walk, ten minutes walking being within the threshold Google deems physically possible, plus an arbitrary amount of time on a rather slow bus. Apple Maps and Transit are better at this.
This might just be realistic about the median American's tolerance for walking. Most Americans live in suburbs that are not walkable. At least, I know my own tolerance for walking is very abnormal for an American, and it's due to having lived in walking-oriented cities like Berkeley.
I'm outside the US and I regularly get directions with 15-20 min walking.
You might be on to something.
> This might just be realistic about the median American's tolerance for walking.
This might be unrealistic about the number and relevance of Median-Americans. Turns out more than a few Americans that are outside of the median own telephones.
At risk of summoning an army of vibe coders, I wish map apps were more configurable and let you set "I'm happy to walk 20 min" or "someone can drive me a few miles and drop me off"
Depending on where you live there is Transitous: https://transitous.org/
It's a FOSS public transport routing engine. In the options you can select what type and how much time you want to spend on the first and last "mile" (even something like bike/scooter sharing).
It uses open data or data connectors for the routing. And being FOSS, if there is no data connector yet for you region, it may be interesting to contribute one if there is a sane way to query the data from the local transport compan(y|ies).
It's not exactly what you asked for, but the public transit and multimodal focused apps are generally much better at this stuff. I like CityMapper and Transit.
Neither is good for turn-by-turn directions, but both are good for "what are all the different ways to get there"
Here's a tip if you use google maps: if you want to get from A to B but can walk a bit, just pick a point C between them then look up directions to and from point C separately. Works great
Pro-tip: if you want to get from A to B without using Google Maps, simply pick a sequence of intermediate points A = a_0, …, a_n = B where each pair of consecutive points aren’t too far apart, and then travel to each point in turn.
The public transport app in my city almost does this well, it even affords cycling. But it isn’t quite as nuanced as one would like.
I wish I could add certain streets and routes to some sort of block list.
There are certain roads I would be willing to spend an extra 10-30 minutes driving to avoid. (And certainly would not get on them on a bike!)
Not to mention “public transit but with a waypoint” which is too advanced for all mobile apps
Speaking of trains, that's another thing they don't do. The auto-snapping of current location consistently snaps to whatever road or goat track it can find nearby, while equally consistently refusing to snap to the railroad they have mapped.
Sure, there's not much need for navigation in that situation, but if you're trying to be smart regarding where I am, maybe take into account if I'm travelling at 200 kph before plonking me on a twisty gravel road.
Oddly, it seems to be okay at that in Dublin at least.
I'm still astounded by how poorly Gmaps handles Seattle ferries. The time and routing calculations always assume the best case scenario. I've had it insist I take the ferry because it estimated a 5 minute time savings, when in reality there is a minimum 3hr wait for a boat. This I can work around, but the truly awful behavior is that if you pull off for gas and then get back on the highway, it will automatically recalculate to the 'shorter' ferry route. The only solution I have found is to add additional stops along your preferred route.
It does this same thing when you're trying to use a road that parallels the main highway. Sometimes I don't want to go 70, I want to go 45 on a nice quiet side road. Well even after I programmed a specific route, it keeps trying to take me back to the main highway because it found a faster route. Fuck, I don't always want the fastest route. I basically don't use any turn by turn navigation stuff anymore. I check routes before leaving, take a few notes on a piece of paper, and memorize it. Not only do you learn the route much better, you have much less chance of getting lost, and you're not constantly distracted by your navigation app.
Can't you turn off highways?
Yeah at this point Google Maps has 20 years of data to work with it should work flawlessly in big cities.
Can’t you disable ferries same as toll roads?
It’s not on the quick select pills so it’s not obvious but yes you can https://youtube.com/shorts/SA72d9VfsPg?is=F6zKWQNOkokN31F3
As for your other question, it looks like the guy was responding to an implied “I can’t turn off tolls as a hack bypass ferries because the bridge also requires a toll”. I’d speculate that it wasn’t obvious there’s a ferry-specific filter because the other filters show up as pills.
The main alternate route is a toll bridge unfortunately.
That does not answer the question.
Don't forget driving in the bay area. Google maps will happily recommend entering 580/880/80 at Emeryville and going on 580 east instead of the much better entrance at 36 street that's 5 minutes out of the way.
Its also possible that its optimised for least walking for other reasons. If you were disabled in any way (like a wheel chair) or even an old lady maybe this is the better route. Or if was during a huge snowstorm or heatwave?
Apple Maps also does this.
It would also be nice to have a configurable transportation choice for the time to leave notice. Because some things I’ll walk to, some I’ll take transit and some I’ll drive and Apple seems to want be to just pick one and only use that.
My other map complaint is that there’s no indication of how much tolls are when comparing toll vs non-toll routes. Because if it’s $5 to save ten minutes, no thanks but for a buck, maybe I’ll do it.
My Apple Watch asks me if I am doing an outdoor walk everytime I am at Disney World. It sometimes takes 15 minutes to notice. Imho if its going to ask me this it should know every time I get to Disney that I am going to walk all day long and account for it.
While I am on the subject, Google Maps seems to be somewhat aware of big awkward train stations which take ages to navigate, and applies a time penalty. That's good (though also a bit inconsistent). However, it seems to assume that metro stations are of zero size; you go in the door, and immediately get on any line. This is very not true in some places.
That completely tracks coming from people who work in a place laid out like this:
They have big offices in San Francisco, and also in New York, Dublin, Zurich, London, and various other cities where this stuff matters, though, these days (their Dublin office is right beside the train station that it insists I shouldn't go to, because walking!). You'd think it would've gotten fixed at some point.
I used to work in the Seattle office, but I wouldn't have had the first idea how to get anything like this changed.
A lot of tech is overfit to the product manager role in tech companies. One of the side effects of living in a bubble.
My Apple Watch is set up by default to assume any 15-minute walk is a "workout" and interrupt me to ask if I wanted to record it. No, I'm just going to the store, what is this "workout" nonsense. My Oura Ring was worse, it would assume any walk duration is noteworthy and my timeline would be a jumbled mess of "workouts". But these would be reasonable assumptions for a mostly sedentary office worker living in the suburbs.
I remember when a Google feature was announced long ago, some of the headlining features was plane ticket support and currency conversion. The average American gets on a plane once a year, to a place where they accept American dollars, and wouldn't ever care about these features. But these are important if you're in your 30s and travel is an important part of your life for either business or vacations.
I think this likely has more to do with the NP Hard problem of generating directions more than it has to do with bad design.
Shortest-Path (Djikstra's) is in P :)
I remember Google maps working well for walking around in Europe. Ever since I've moved to America, not so much. Go figure...
This is in Ireland. I’ve also noticed it doing very silly things in Germany and the UK.
It’s fine for pure walking directions, but it gets unhappy about the idea of someone using public transport walking.
there really needs to be a configurable rules/decisions engine. I.e. i would prefer to walk everywhere, i will take public transit if it saves me more than 15 minutes total or 5 minutes per leg, evaluate this at every interchange node.
There are some routings in london for example where the best course of action is actually to take a train, get off walk 5 minutes then take a different train, google will always tell you to stay on the train to a point where you can change trains in the same station.
I'd also be able to tell it "never suggest that I get bus routes A, B or C; they do not in practice turn up on time".
> There are some routings in london for example where the best course of action is actually to take a train, get off walk 5 minutes then take a different train, google will always tell you to stay on the train to a point where you can change trains in the same station.
Had a good one in Amsterdam recently; rather than walk 9 minutes to the nearby central station and get a train there, it wanted me to walk 6 minutes to the central station's metro station entrance (which was a bit closer), get a metro, then join the train at another station entirely. Would have taken about twice as long.
Google isn't making arbitrary decisions here - it's reflecting social norms. Americans aren't big on walking. I've seen pictures of beautiful leafy suburbs that don't even have sidewalks.
This is overstated. At least as of 2017, Americans walked about 93% as much as people in France, for example, and a little more than people in Portugal or Greece.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/747380/daily-step-averag...
Jogging was invented in the US. I think it is more of a class problem than a nationality problem.
I guess it says more about people in France, Portugal and Greece.
The difference is: they COULD walk if they wanted.
You can't if there is no walkway.
Google has giant offices in NYC. Like, you'd think this would have come up.
I remember the time when roundabouts were round in Google Maps.
Fwiw I have a pixel and run a lot. It's never happened to me.
Google's mapper has an option for whether to minimize walking. Turned on, it will do things like this, prioritizing the route with the least walking. it would be quite willing to do this sort of thing. Turned off, it will prioritize based on arrival time.
There is a maximum walking distance, I don't know the limit but it's certainly more than 10 minutes. I have never managed to trigger it other than by asking for a route to a location miles beyond any transit options. And it did provide me a route across the Grand Canyon. (Most people are not doing a rim-to-rim in a single day.) (But then it was totally bonkers--offered me a bike route with a time that was preposterous. Looking at it--tiny portion by bike, then walk your bike--the standard rim-to-rim route. But it assumed bicycle speed. No--try that, you're going over.)
> ”Adding “running” to the list of things that Google engineers apparently don’t do.”
Not with a phone, no. Why would you take your phone with you when you run? It’s bulky and annoying.
If you really need to be reachable or to be able to pay for something in emergencies, that’s what smart watches are for.
> Why would you take your phone with you when you run?
Well, how would I get my phone back after I ran to the place I intended to run to otherwise?
> Why would you take your phone with you when you run?
So you can listen to music? And most people don't have a smart watch.
It's fairly common to see people running with a phone strapped to their arm.
found the product manager
Unlikely to be the product manager, but absolutely the product manager mentality. How can people live without our product? Reality check: people fucking manage in the real world. Especially those with limited means.
Are we using the same app? Google Maps on my phone has a selector which MUST specify if you want public transport, car, walking directions etc.
If I select public transport yes, it will suggest public transport ways to get there. I can't see how this is a bug in any way
If I select walking it will show me how to walk there no matter if it takes 15 min or 15 days.
I can choose which i want depending on if i'm tired or weather is bad...
The parent isn’t looking for pure walking, they’re looking for transit directions that include a higher amount of walking in order to save time overall.
But I don't. If I specifically look up transport directions it often means weather is bad or I'm tired. so no thanks please keep as is
Transit directions includes walking on both ends. Because the train doesn't start and end precisely as your destination (this is called a "taxi cab").
Ok that makes sense.
My tips would be: check if it mistakenly thinks you can't directly walk to the station or something. In my town there's a particular place i often go to where Google I guess just doesn't know or care that there IS a crossing. if I just pick a point across the street it suggests much better routes
And personally if it's more than 5 min of walking i would just look up the way to the station and then from the station separately with whatever modes i prefer
And lobby your government for sorting out public transportation to your block? It seems crazy inconvenient
It sounds like they want the shortest time, even if that means mixing public transit with walking together
In a somewhat similar vein, I find that when I use my Apple Watch to track a hike, it will frequently auto pause or ask me if I've finished when I'm climbing slowly up a steep ascent. It annoys the heck out of me because they also have access to my heart rate data - and I think it's pretty safe to assume that if my HR is holding steady at 150 BPM then I have not stopped for a break. Or at least give me the option to turn off Auto Pause/Auto End just for hiking workouts - instead I have to turn off the feature for all workouts.
The world of appliances is littered with these "smart" features that try to make life more convenient, but really just end up causing more trouble than they solve.
I found this doozy from someone trying to test out the feature:
> After looking over Google’s advice, my key takeaway was that thieves are in much better shape than me, and run both longer and faster than this nerdy writer has in more than two decades.
https://www.androidauthority.com/android-theft-detection-loc...
Personally, the main situation I'm concerned about is on a bus or train, where someone grabs your phone right and exits right before the door closes. But I already avoid spending a lot of time on the street with my head buried in my phone.
Is "snatching a phone and running off" a common enough problem in some regions that this is worth having? Or is this a feature chasing after fears of the bogeyman, leading to concrete inconveniences like this?
> Is "snatching a phone and running off" a common enough problem in some regions that this is worth having?
Yes absolutely
Thanks! Given this was CBC, my jaw hit the floor when I saw London. I live 20 mins from London, Ontario and 70k thefts in a year would be _insane_. Then I realized it was about London, U.K. and my jaw only hit the table. 70k is still insane, though.
Is it really insane? That is less than 200 per day, in a city of 15 million people.. a single gang of 20 thieves could likely manage that! The real question is, how does this compare to other cities of this size and demographics?
Why compare demographics?
I would expect a city that's mostly retirement communities to have less snatch-and-run thefts than a city where tourists make up a large part of the population at any given time.
Interestingly, Tokyo has a much larger population than London with a very low crime rate. I can’t find specific numbers on stolen phones (only lost phone statistics are published) but robberies/muggings are 0.04 per 1,000 yearly versus London’s 2.83 per 1,000. Seoul has a similar rate to Tokyo, 0.4 to 0.5.
Also, is there even a single city of London’s size that is mostly retirement communities?
The kind of crime in Tokyo that is happening may also just not be reported
In Beijing robberies are 0.55 per 1,000. In Taipei it’s an unbelievable 0.0036 per 1,000, although general theft is higher at 2.12 (compared to London at 52.9). Are all these countries underreporting?
Singapore is 0.01 per 1,000. Hanoi doesn’t have published statistics but its Numbeo crime index (calculated from surveys) is 28.71 versus London at 55.22.
I think we can stop excusing London’s numbers.
Want a non-Asian country in case Asians are somehow magical beings who don’t do robberies? Ottawa is 0.11 to 0.13 per 1,000. Vancouver is 0.73 per 1,000. Sydney is 0.13 to 0.15 per 1,000. Dubai is 0.03 to 0.045 per 1,000.
London is supposed to be a global city on par with many of these others. So what is going wrong?
It’s hard to get good stats on Cairo, but its crime index is lower than London somehow, despite the higher levels of poverty.
Retired people a probably quite easy targets in this scenario.
The number is too high, but dropping: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdx4762znr6o
Even the CBC thinks of London, England before London, Ontario.
Poor London. (Ontario.) (Canada.)
Why bother stealing iPhones? Is it just for the scrap/recycle->repair value?
There's also a scam where they contact the owner from abroad, offering to return it, claiming they're an innocent trying to activate a used phone they spent their last dollar on, or threatening the original user into unlocking it. They will say that they're hackers, connected to criminals in your home city, using your name and recent photos to say that they're going to expose your text messages. Anything to get an unlock.
They send them to countries where they aren't locked or break it down for parts.
> They send them to countries where they aren't locked
iphones will remain locked regardless of what country they're in. I presume you're talking about states who are seemingly unwilling to pursue/prosecute claims of theft?
there's still a fairly lucrative parts stripping market and there are extreme efforts that are used to "unlock" locked devices - it has been known in the Chinese marketplace that you could get paired chips to do SMD rework with a "clean" set of identifiers. they'll swap the SOC, the flash, and the wireless all for a few bucks.
older iOS devices as well are also vulnerable to having their syscfg rewritten via exploits, so you can "clean" a locked device that way as well with a good set of serials. Apple Watches are a hot one for this.
On top of that a sizable percentage of theft victims don't even bother to report it stolen.
You can't activate the hardware with a different ID regardless. It requires the owner to relinquish ownership.
I'm sure this is different with different components of course depending on how granularly apple tracks their hardware—but the whole package certainly can't be activated.
You can send them to Chinese chop-shops and still turn a decent buck.
Ever since phones became pretty immune to reselling-theft (steal phone, reset it, sell it) people have been snatching phones and trying to empty crypto, banks, etc before it locks. Some apps don't reauthenticate.
Bonus security on iPhone - if you long-press on any app, you can click "Require Face ID" and it will make thieves need your face again to open bank or sensitive apps. I did this for all my financial apps amd also email so they can't reset passwords. It isna minor inconvenience but would hopefully prevent an unlocked phone from being stolen and having bank accounts emptied.
The email is what most people miss. Unlocked phone = SMS and email for most people.
Android Private Space https://support.google.com/android/answer/15341885?hl=en
Interesting point. The article linked in a sibling comment (about 2025 thefts) suggests that they are being resold. Which makes sense if it's a $2000 product that's so stealable. But I do recall there being a lot of difficulty resetting a phone that isn't yours. Do you feel the is article wrong? Are there ways around it? Is "pretty immune to reselling-theft" a newer feature than 2025?
If I have your unlocked iPhone, I could probably reset your Apple ID because I have access to your email and your texts so I can reset your Apple ID password unlock your phone unlock. Remove it from Find My and reset it.
It makes me wonder if there’s some way to put a third lock on there that’s not normally unlocked.
Activation Lock now extends to the serials of the parts inside every iPhone since Apple knows the S/N of everything. If you pull the battery off an Activation Locked phone and put it in another phone it's going to freak out and complain the part is pairing-locked and won't pair to your device but it'll be baseline usable. You'll just keep getting nasty nags in the Settings letting you know you're using stolen parts.
https://support.apple.com/guide/security/activation-lock-sec...
As of iOS 27 beta, there's now an additional "partner finance lock" status that will also be an available parts-lock status (to prevent a 'leased' device from being parted out).
https://9to5mac.com/2026/07/21/ios-27-code-suggests-apple-co...
In Mexico, apparently, the scheme is to grab a phone from an inattentive pedestrian from a motorcycle or scooter.
Yes, its why those long crossbody lanyards are now so popular.
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/mggh4ll/a/crossbody-strap...
It's a big enough problem in Brazil that the government has an official app to report incidents of phone theft:
https://www.gov.br/pt-br/apps/celular-seguro-br
https://www.gov.br/pt-br/servicos/comunicar-roubo-furto-de-a...
>an official app to report incidents of phone theft
I can't be the only person to see the irony here. Do they also have a drive-thru to report car theft?
After you install it you cana "safe contact" or do the reporting on a website which will blocklist the phone's IMEI on all phone companies, block any banking app sessions and remotely wipe the phone.
It also functions as a public searchable database of stolen phones, allowing a prospective buyer of a second hand device to check it.
Thats actually pretty awesome.
RTFM
Massive in London.
Eh, it certainly gets a lot of _attention_, and London is very, very big, so the absolute numbers are impressive-looking. The chances of it actually happening to any given person are extremely low, though.
Ha. I was in London for work and had my phone snatched on a work trip the second day. Kings Cross area. Massive pain to get insurance to figure it out and I had to buy a burner.
Two guys hopped a wide sidewalk, never stopped and were back into traffic in an instant.
Everyone gave me the "you should't have been dressed that way" response. Police did nothing dispite certainly plenty of evidence (video, from apple, etc. etc).
Coming soon near you:
- Warming up for a run: Possible agitated tweaker, possible crisis
- Going for a run after midnight: Evasive solitary movement after dark
- Sprinting the last block home: Flight behavior consistent with shoplifting offense
- Running with a hood up in the rain: Deliberate biometric obfuscation - Two runners meeting at a corner and leaving in opposite directions: Brief contact event, possible hand-to-hand
Score increase the darker you get.
Or even taking a walk:
<https://archive.org/details/sim_reporter_1951-08-07_5_3_0/pa...>
(Alternate link: <https://archive.org/details/sim_reporter_1951-08-07_5_3/page...>)
2036 crime prevention, detecting this behaviour and automatically forwarding it to the police to be referenced later for probable cause.
Pfft, police. Have you read Watchbird (1953) by Robert Sheckley? That's pretty much exactly where we're heading right now.
The solution is clear - an "I am a tweaker" toggle.
Such a silly complaint. Just file a request with Google for a run, and if you give them a few hours advance notice and verify that it's you through a video call with their AI authentication service, they'll put you right in the queue and tell you the range of slots that you're likely to get one of. You can use the time between now and then to get approval on your route.
I refuse to go running with a phone - too heavy, and too distracting, running outside is one of the few places I _escape_ the phone for a bit. So I made sure to get a fitness tracker with onboard GPS. It syncs to the phone later, when I return, which then uploads workout data to the vendor's cloud.
I look at the results on my PC with a web browser, phone is a passive middleman and is never touched directly for fitness tracking.
You may have tried this, but I run with my phone in an elasticated belt that's just tight enough to keep the phone stable without being uncomfortable. I really don't want to fork out for another device just for running. (I also find a watch on my wrist annoying when I don't wear one normally).
Not the OP but I used to do that - problem is phones are becoming so damn large even the elasticated belt doesnt work that great anymore. Too much bounce.
I found a "belt" thats much wider and doesnt have a clip (has to be sized just right) that does work better. But a bit of a pain to wear sometimes.
For years I just literally ran with the phone in my hand (got used to switching hands and positions for comfort) so I could still do music and tracking. Not that bad when you get used to it. Eventually got a Garmin watch (cheapest with maps and music) which works great.
In Sweden where I live you need to use the digital national ID whenever you make a credit card transaction via some app, for example when buying a bus ticket, so you need to have it with you at all times. But with the ID you can also take a quick loan and transfer all the money to a foreign bank basically ruining your life as the bank take no responsibility if the ID is used during the transaction.
You seem to be shaking your phone in frustration. Would you like to submit a bug report?
A good example of how a wrong assumption ruins something (in tech, products, and life in general). I love the feature idea, but the assumption that a sudden brisk run equals theft obviously ruined it. Well, easy for us to say in retrospect, but my point is: don't make assumptions, test your theories, challenge them, confirm them. Scientific method rules.
my apple watch triggers a high noise notification every time wind blows a bit stronger than a gentle breeze.
I thought there was an article a while back where devices could also log when sex was going on.
Its not wrong though...
Solution is simple, run slower!
Is this creeping brand rep protection? Rather like Meta glasses' recording warning LED.
someone DID snatch the phone and then run off with it, but if it was up to me I would have mine without any gyros or gps sensors in it, in the first place, and instead a bunch of simpler features that I can only wish for. the list of instant emergency activities now includes, sking, dancing,and running with automatic file screening for pedo content and who knows what else in state of trembling readiness to report and testify as the new default, you.
oooh now I get the meme posts with the duct-taping phone to hand visiting Paris
this is easily solved by buying the corresponding wearable made by your phone manufacturer!
/s
Or just get an insane case and bike lock the phone to your body. Now they have to steal you as well!