Couldn't the watch request the list of satellites locked to the phone and pretend to be locked to them as well, instead of building the list by itself?
That’s possible and I k ow the watch will do this. I run with both my phone and Apple Watch. For long runs 20-26 miles, I use the phone for music to my AirPods. I run slow enough for the watch battery to be drained after a marathon of I try to have my watch do it all.
I’ve had a few instances where the running track gets all wonky when I go through something like a long underpass tunnel. It’s long enough to miss a GPS signal for many minutes. Instead, it guesses where I am based on distance to cell towers (I think). Or at least, that’s what the running trace seemed like to me. Everytime I went under a tunnel, I found out later that I ran a 3 minute mile — on miles 16, 20, and 22 (that’s not possible).
Now I just disable Bluetooth on my watch entirely while doing long runs. I’ve found the watch by itself to be more accurate, in general.
Plenty of people, including the author and me, don't carry a phone any more, just a watch. Anyway the watch really needs its own fix as the phone will be displaced from the watch and have a different orientation even if you have it close by.
I’ve had a few instances where the running track gets all wonky when I go through something like a long underpass tunnel. It’s long enough to miss a GPS signal for many minutes. Instead, it guesses where I am based on distance to cell towers (I think). Or at least, that’s what the running trace seemed like to me. Everytime I went under a tunnel, I found out later that I ran a 3 minute mile — on miles 16, 20, and 22 (that’s not possible).
Now I just disable Bluetooth on my watch entirely while doing long runs. I’ve found the watch by itself to be more accurate, in general.