In reply to girlymonkey:
I've used a running watch (various Garmins, using a Fenix 5 now) for about a decade and just prefer the convenience.
I think the problems you're having might be more down to your phone - after all the recording can only be as good as the GPS data it's getting and that is down to the hardware in your phone, not the Strava software.
That said, all devices have glitches. My watch recorded 20,000m of elevation on a 20 mile run last week (should have only been less than 2000) and at one point during the run my watch said I was doing 80,000 vertical metres per hour! I can only assume that was an anomaly with the barometric alitmeter and not the GPS. Ironically it was Strava that fixed the problem by applying the basemap data to the run afterwards to work it out.
Anyway, being able to glance at your time/distance while running is a big nice to have. The other problem I have is the battery on my iPhone dies if it gets even remotely cold resulting in lost recordings - the watch doesn't have that problem.
The watches are generally waterproof and being strapped to your wrist you're unlikely to drop it. I've lot count of the number of times I've dropped my phone into rivers/puddles/snowbanks etc (and I only really take it out for photos).
Lastly, I wear it all day as essentially an activity tracker which gives some nice metrics that are useful for training (resting HR and general amount of non-training activity).
> Are the watches that much better?
Yes... but. They're an indulgence and (especially the higher end ones) hard to justify unless you're using them a lot. However, today being cyber Monday might be a good time to look