Walking distance weirdness in watchOS 27.0

It’s been a couple of weeks since I got my Apple Watch Ultra 4. I’ve written about some upcoming features that I’m not psyched about, but I’ve otherwise been very happy with the upgrade. There’s just one issue: the new walking distance estimation is completely busted for me. I’ve previously used an Apple Watch Series 3, Series 5, Series 7, and Ultra 1. In each of those cases, the watch tracked my steps well and translated them into a reasonable approximation of my outdoor walking distance. When I got the Ultra 4, I noticed that this was no longer the case. Currently, I get around a third to half the distance for any given set of steps on an indoor walk exercise (or for the regular steps I put in throughout the day). At first I figured that I might need a few outdoor walks to calibrate it. But things are still way out of whack after a dozen 30+ minute outdoor walks. To be clear: when I do an outdoor walk/run exercise, I get the distance values I expect — likely because of GPS tracking.…