How Many Times I Walked Though the Europe with my Samsung Watches (So Far)?
I have been using Samsung watches since 2019. I started with gear sport — a nice watch with a rather unique design and later upgraded to galaxy watch 3.
Like many other smartwatch users, I mostly pay attention to the current numbers. Weekly reports and global challenges and personal bests help a bit to keep an eye on a bigger picture, but not that much.
So, I have 3 years of health data collected in Samsung Health and have not used it — this is sad. Moreover, these were not just “some 3 years”. These are very special years:
- one pre-covid year (2019)
- a bit more than 2 years of lockdowns, social restrictions and work from home (2020, 2021, 2022)
An interesting dataset for analysis and comparison!
The obvious metrics to check are “steps” and “climbed floors”. They are collected since day-one I put my gear sport on my wrist.
The simplest 3 questions I decided to find the answers for are:
- How the covid-19 pandemia restrictions impacted my general activity level. I tried to keep on the same level, but did I succeed?
- What distance I walk and what elevation I “climb” per year
- What distance I walked during these 3 years in total and the same for elevation.
With this in mind, I opened Samsung Health app on my smartphone.
Impact of Anti-covid restrictions on my activity level
The number of steps per day is a rather good indicator of activity level for a person who is not deep in some specific type of sport (here I agree with the author of this video).
Few taps and I’m in the year-level steps and floors history section of the app:
According to the statistic, the average number of steps per day in 2020 and 2021 is even bigger than in 2019. So, now I know that I did a good job here!
Meanwhile, the number of floors I climbed has decreased in 2020 (12 floors/day in 2019, 9.6 floors/day in 2020). I do not have a comparable alternative to my daily stairs “routine” in the office building, and I see the result now . This is rather sad since stepping is a more intensive “exercise” than walking.
Altogether, I would say that my activity level stayed on the same level.
Walked distance and climbed elevation per year
The screens with statistics above do not include total numbers (I do not understand why, but this is how it is). Not a big problem, though — we all know that:
<Total Amount>=<average amount/day>*<number of days>
The only tricks here are: I need to find out how many days I used my watch in 2019, and do not forget that 2020 was a leap year.
The simplest way to find how many days I used my watch in 2019 — check my profile page:
And then, to get an elevation in meters number of floors must be multiple to 3 (this is what is counted as a floor according to the Samsung Health explanation).
After doing the math I got following results:
- Year 2019: 2517 km walked, 13140m climbed (floors based)
- Year 2020: 2843 km walked, 10540m climbed (floors based)
- Year 2021: 2945 km walked, 9964m climbed (floors based)
The distance in km is not very informative. At least for me. It is better to compare it with something. For example with a walk through Europe. And for elevation — Mount Everest (8849 meters) is a straightforward reference.
So, every year I virtually cross Europe with my feet. And climb to a height that is higher than Everest. I did not know this before!
Total walked distance and climbed elevation
To answer this final question I just need to combine number for all years together and do not forget about 2022. There result is: since 15th March of 2019 I:
- Walked 8623 km
- “Climbed” (floors only) 34,5 km
This can be compared with a walk from Berlin to Tokyo. And before the end of the year I should complete my “4th Everest”.
All questions answered. And now it is time for a walk.
