Seattle Forrest

​​​​​​You would think so, but it's a lot more nuanced than this.

The main reason is all Garmin cycling, running, and multi sport devices record your activity details and automatically creates a database for you. There are reports of you desire showing how many miles you've gone each year, month, whatever, how much time, etc.

Also, the GPS works differently depending on your mode of transportation. Since water blocks the signal, swimming mode works differently (I don't know if the Instinct has OWS though). To deal with inaccuracies inherent in satellite based navigation, Garmin watches make more use of the compass and maybe the accelerometer for walking than cycling because your speed (really inertia) rule out side to side jitter on the bike that's more plausible walking. Basically dead reckoning to augment GPS quality.

There's an auto detect mode for activity, but no one uses it. You can probably find out how well that works from the google.