There’s an increasing trend of using Android Wear as the OS for specialty fitness wearables. At CES, Casio announced a rugged sensor-packed Wear device that also has a monochrome watch mode. Polar is continuing in that line with an Android Wear watch that doubles as an exercise wearable with an optical heart rate sensor, GPS, and activity tracking.
After announcing the device on June 3rd, Samsung’s latest fitness wearable, the Gear Fit 2, is now available for pre-order from multiple online retailers. You’ll be able to order the device in black, blue, and pink for $179.99, and it’s set to ship on June 10th.
Update: Jawbone says that the report is “unequivocally false”. Read the company’s update at its blog.
According to a report this evening from Tech Insider, Jawbone, the company once famous for its Bluetooth headsets and more recently known for its Jambox speakers and fitness wearables, has stopped making the UP line of fitness trackers. This includes three devices that the company has reportedly struggled to sell: the UP2, UP3, and UP4. Another report says that a clinical-grade wearable is coming soon…
With the Gear S3 rumored to have a fall release, Samsung also appears to be working on a successor to 2014’s Gear Fit, as well as a pair of smart wireless earbuds. According to VentureBeat, both the Gear Fit 2 and Gear IconX earbuds are meant to be fitness gadgets.
While still in retirement, Google’s former head of search Amit Singhal is joining the board of GOQii, a smart fitness startup that has already launched in India. Unlike other fitness competitors, GOQii is more focused on selling a personal coaching service than actual hardware.
Following in the footsteps of competitors, Adidas and Under Armor, ASICS will buy fitness app-maker, Runkeeper. The move was announced on Medium by Runkeeper’s founder, Jason Jacobs, and indicates that all fitness apparel companies clearly see the need to embed tracking technology, and/or tie-in apps with their brands.
My Tracks is a light weight, single purpose app that uses your phone’s GPS to track your physical activities. The app has not received a major update in a while and, unsurprisingly, Google has now announced that it is shutting it down after April 30th.
In an effort to get customers entirely absorbed into their ecoystem in one fell swoop, HTC and Under Armor have today announced HealthBox. Although it may sound like the brand-name for some kind of nutritious lunch, it is in fact a system which ties together a smart scale, fitness band and heart-rate monitor with a smartphone app…
Misfit, makers of popular smartphone-connected wearable fitness accessories, today announced the company is being acquired by watchmaker Fossil Group for $260 million, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Fossil plans to take the technology and integrate it into its traditional watch designs, according to the report:
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Runtastic, developers of several popular fitness apps, today announced it has been acquired by Adidas for € 220 million. The move, according to a press release from both companies, will help Adidas bolster its efforts in offering connected products and its vision of “the convergence of sport, digital and data in an always connected and always on-demand world.” Or in other words, Adidas now has a strong software component with a large user base to integrate with its digitally enabled sports products including balls, wrist devices, apparel, and shoes.
Adidas already offers several of its own mobile apps that cross over into Runtastic’s territory, such as the miCoach train & run app and the Adidas Go app that integrates with Spotify to offer music matched to a user’s running pace. Runtastic, however, has around 20 mobile apps related to fitness and health and claims around 140 million downloads and 70 million registered users. The company also offers a few hardware products, including a scale and fitness tracking devices, that compliment its fitness apps that integrate with other third-party hardware including Android Wear devices and other wearables.
It’s unclear what Adidas has planned for the company and its apps, but Runtastic will be joining the Adidas teams and building new experiences as part of the brand going forward. What exactly that means for the Runtastic brand and integration with Adidas products remains to be seen.
Every so often, Google officially comes out and tells the world about a project they’ve been working on inside Google X. In recent years we’ve heard about the glucose contact lens for diabetes patients, Google Glass, the self-driving car, and more. Now, Google has debuted (via Bloomberg), a new health-tracking wristband capable of monitoring heart rate, heart rhythm, skin temperature, and other useful information such as light exposure and noise levels…
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How many calories does all that Android have?
Google showed off its new photo storage service at I/O last week with features including unlimited backup and searching for images by keywords, but the company has another image-related technology in development. Google can already recognize images of food when you search your photo library, but its currently developing technology that goes a step further by actually counting the calories in your meal based on your food shots. This could make dieting and calorie counting much more convenient in the future if it works well enough…
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Google cares about your health and wants to help you stay in shape, which is why the company today released a set of updates and new features for the Google Fit platform across Android smartphones and Wear watches that make it easier to track your daily progress and fitness goals…
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If you were thinking about buying a fitness band, a university study suggests you probably shouldn’t bother: it found that the Samsung Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5s measure activity more reliably than most current fitness bands.
The study by the University of Pennsylvania (via EurekAlert!) tested the ability of the phones to measure steps on a treadmill and compared the results to six dedicated fitness bands. The two smartphones had a margin of error of 12.9%, while the error rates of the fitness bands ranged up to 22.7%.
The study tested the Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5s against the Nike Fuelband, Jawbone UP24, Digi-Walker SW-200, Fitbit Flex, Fitbit One and Fitbit Zip. Only the FitBit One and Zip performed significantly better than the two smartphones.
Microsoft hasn’t officially announced its wearable device, but it seems the company has accidentally published its desktop syncing client to the Mac App Store early. Whoops. The device is called the Microsoft Band (possibly Lumia Band, according to some currently non-functional support URLs).
The Microsoft privacy policy for the app lists some of the Band’s features: “Microsoft Band sensors help you keep track of things like your heart rate, steps, calories burned, and sleep.” Links in the document claiming to lead to a page with additional data, such as a list of sensors, currently lead to a 404 page.
Other key feature include the ability to get phone notifications on the Band, create reminders using Cortana, and more:
Google is planning to collect data from 175 participants in a new study to attempt to create a statistical standard for what is considered a healthy person, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The data collected in this study, called Project Baseline, will presumably be used at some point in the future to monitor technology users for any signs of potential medical issues and alert them.
In the study, which will eventually be expanded to thousands of participants, Google X’s Dr. Andrew Conrad and a team of as many as 100 scientists in varying fields will collect anonymous molecular and genetic data in order to determine the idea traits of a healthy individual. These samples will come in the form of tissue, tears, urine, and more which will be collected this summer.
CNET reports that Samsung is partnering with bicycle manufacturer Trek and its factory race team to explore the options for integrating the company’s technology into future bicycles.
The company has begun testing some of its mobile products — such as the Galaxy S5, its Gear portfolio, and the Galaxy Note — on the Trek Factory Racing Team as they train for some of the world’s top races, such as the Tour de France. As they ride, the team will monitor their health stats, racing cadence, and speed, along with communicate about team strategies and race routes …
Following the release of the Sony Smartwatch 2, the company has now pushed its latest wearable product to the United States market: the Sony SmartBand SWR10 (via Android Central). The device may look familiar if you’re a Fitbit user, and that’s because it basically does the same thing. The device features an accelerometer for tracking your steps, LED and vibration alerts for phone notifications, controls for media, and an app that works only with Android.
This Lifelog Android app is where the true functionality of this device comes, however:
Lifelog collects data from both the SmartBand and your smartphone to tell a broader story of what happens in your life — fitness, location, weather, photos, music, personal notes (life bookmarks) and more. Lifelog displays the information in a colorful, versatile interface that helps you reflect on what you did each day and set goals for the future. Lifelog displays your activity in a colorful, multi-faceted interface that lets you view your information in various ways.
You can get the SmartBand SWR10 straight from Sony for $99.99, and it comes with the removable main unit as well as two wristbands of different sizes. Alternatively, you can purchase the device on Amazon for $10 less, at $89.99.
With rumors of Apple’s upcoming iWatch and its focus on fitness, it’s not a stretch to think that Google couldn’t also be exploring a similar use for its own devices. Now, as spotted by the unofficial Google Operating System blog, it seems we have our first glimpse at a fitness API for Android.
Whether this API will become available in a future Android update or will require new hardware or sensors to fully operate is not yet known. The company has already included some fitness sensors with its Nexus 5, but there’s currently no way for other devices to take advantage of similar data natively. A system fitness API could open up new doors, not just for Google’s own software, but for third-party developers like Nike.
