Worked great 1st session but now is never accurate
Bought the Apple Watch a few months ago strictly for surfing. Surf usually about 5 times a week and have been using the soul surfer subscription upgrade since I bought the Apple Watch. My first session was super accurate catching 15 waves in an hour. Did not Miss any as I tracked the wave count in my head along with watch. Each session since it seems to get worse. I’ve had a few sessions where I caught at least 20 waves and it will track 5 or less and also say a wave was 40 feet when it was well over 350 feet. It’s a bummer because I was super stoked after my first session with this app and am now looking for others that might be better with fixing bugs or just a better gps system. Surfline sessions seems to be way more accurate as I run it at the same time when I run dawn patrol. Hopefully the developers fix all the problems…won’t resubscribe if it doesn’t start working better.
Today I caught 24 waves. It was firing out with fun 4 to 5 foot barrels and just great waves. Dawn patrol app only registered 2 waves out of the 24 ridden and finished. So frustrating! Hopefully Strata comes out with something soon that will take over because Dawn Patrol at this point is just extremely frustrating. I’ve noticed if you pig dog on a wave it never registers and also noticed if there is marine layer nothing hardly registers. Ridiculous
Today I caught 24 waves. It was firing out with fun 4 to 5 foot barrels and just great waves. Dawn patrol app only registered 2 waves out of the 24 ridden and finished. So frustrating! Hopefully Strata comes out with something soon that will take over because Dawn Patrol at this point is just extremely frustrating. I’ve noticed if you pig dog on a wave it never registers and also noticed if there is marine layer nothing hardly registers. Ridiculous
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Highly inaccurate surf tracking
I’ve had this app for a few years now. I even subscribe to the Soul Surfer forecast because the complication looks cool on my watch. But that’s the only good thing about this app - the complication looks cool on the Apple watch. The surf tracking is horrible. It captures very few waves than the actual number of waves caught. Like seriously way off. Sometimes it even records zero waves. I observe this issue at different surf spots. I contacted the developer a couple of years ago and they told me to set the sensitivity to Slow. Did that, still did not record the waves. Then I tried setting the sensitivity to Medium and Fast, neither helped. I deleted the app from my phone and my watch and reinstalled, did not help. I turned off and on the watch before every session to make sure the watch is reset, did not help. Nothing that I tried helped. And I have gone through two Apple watches - still the same issue. I keep waiting for a fix that never came to this day. If you use Surfline Sessions on your watch, you’ll see Surfline Sessions is even way more accurate than this app. Don’t waste your time on this, and especially your money on the Soul Surfer subscription. It’s total garbage. I’ll just get the Rip Curl GPS 2 instead, which I should have done a long time ago. I wish the developer cared enough to fix this, but it’s been years and nothing has changed. I guess they just don’t care enough once they hook you in with the Soul Surfer subscription.
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Response from developer
Hi, thanks for your review. It's good that you have changed the sensitivity settings, this sometimes work, although in 2-4 ft the medium setting should work alright. We use the GPS information provided by the device you use in the water. This works well in general, however on some beaches or some occasions the GPS info could be less accurate than others. With every release we improve the app and the accuracy of the measurements. We keep learning from the data we’re getting onwards. Please continue to use the app and you'll find out it'll also work well in 2-4 ft waves in general. Happy surfing!
Good, but too expensive
I like the app, I will say. Can be buggy, not all complications work, but Overall nice app. I will also say, a subscription based model for this product is a straight up grift. This is pure greed. You get no personalised content, no feedback. Needs to change to a one time payment or I will drop it
Misses waves
Surfed many times now using this app can say I’m abit disappointed with the tracking of waves caught. There’s been a couple of sessions where I’ve surfed and caught more than a handful and it says I’ve only caught 1 or not even any sometimes. Looks good aesthetically but doesn’t function properly
Nice app
Cool app. Really nice how it hooks up with the cams to record your waves Aswell
Love this app when it works
The app is great when it works but it’s really temperamental and seems to just stop tracking while I’m out for a surf or works ok but then doesn’t sync with my phone. Either way those waves are recorded which is really frustrating especially as I got my longest and fastest wave the other day with no evidence!!
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Buggiest App on the App Store
Not sure how they got the app in the App Store, mine crashes and mucks around the whole time. When it works it’s great but having tones of problems with it on an ongoing basis. Been using it for 2 years now and it’s always different problems. They must have the most inexperienced developers in the world working on this. The idea is obviously great and with the money they are Charing you’d think they could afford to pay some professional developers to work on it. Thinking of switching to the Rip Curl watch if they can’t smooth things out soon.
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Good when it works
Seems to time out half the time and records nothing.
The perfect surf app!
Really useful app that pairs well with an Apple Watch. I had an issue where some of the tidal data for my local spot was out. I sent in some feedback and the team resolved the issue very quickly and efficiently. I would recommend this app to anyone who is passionate about surfing!
Great idea. Execution lacking.
Updated review.
Still a lot of issues. Surf tracking seems to have gotten a little better, but I often/nearly always get duplicate waves submitted to Surfline sessions, and lots of false waves also get submitted to Surfline sessions, despite Dawn Patrol filtering them out.
Also recently tried out the watch complications. Yikes. Complications won’t update / showing inaccurate readings (especially wind)/ trouble switching spots/ etc. Again, really want this to work, but it’s just not there.
Original review.
I really want this to work. And I hope the folks behind it keep working on it and improving, but at this point in time I’m finding that the app does not really work as advertised. There seems to be real issues with GPS accuracy. I’m using Apple Watch 5 and at the end of my sessions, I see 30-40 waves caught, 5min rides, rides that end halfway up the beach, etc, etc. I’ve tried the different wave sensitivity settings and it doesn’t seem to make any difference. I have no idea whether it’s the GPS signal from the watch or how they’re handling the data, but it definitely doesn’t work as intended. I hope the developers keep improving this - it has the potential to be great!
Still a lot of issues. Surf tracking seems to have gotten a little better, but I often/nearly always get duplicate waves submitted to Surfline sessions, and lots of false waves also get submitted to Surfline sessions, despite Dawn Patrol filtering them out.
Also recently tried out the watch complications. Yikes. Complications won’t update / showing inaccurate readings (especially wind)/ trouble switching spots/ etc. Again, really want this to work, but it’s just not there.
Original review.
I really want this to work. And I hope the folks behind it keep working on it and improving, but at this point in time I’m finding that the app does not really work as advertised. There seems to be real issues with GPS accuracy. I’m using Apple Watch 5 and at the end of my sessions, I see 30-40 waves caught, 5min rides, rides that end halfway up the beach, etc, etc. I’ve tried the different wave sensitivity settings and it doesn’t seem to make any difference. I have no idea whether it’s the GPS signal from the watch or how they’re handling the data, but it definitely doesn’t work as intended. I hope the developers keep improving this - it has the potential to be great!
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