Renewed Sports Tracker on Ovi Store for Nokia's touch phones

Published by Rafe Blandford, Steve Litchfield at 15:43 UTC, April 14th 2010

New in the Nokia Ovi Store is Sports Tracker, from Sports Tracking Technologies (STT). STT is the company founded by Ykä Huhtala, Jussi Kaasinen and Antti Sorvari, who originally created Sports Tracker for Nokia as part of a Nokia Research project, to spin the concept out into a separate company. For those that remember the old Sports Tracker, this has all the usual track and workout logging facilities, plus mapping, courtesy of OpenStreetMap (and loaded ad-hoc) and extras like a countdown to sunset, plus additional export options. Links, comments and screens below.

The new version labelled as v3.01 and works on all of Nokia's touchscreen S60 5th Edition (Symbian^1) phones that have an integrated GPS (N97, N97 mini, X6, and 5230).

The Ovi Store description:

"Train better with the award-winning Sports Tracker app. Your phone becomes a full-featured GPS sports computer, keeping track of everything from calories burned while running to your average cycling speed over altitude. You get maps, time and distance calculators, step count, and even heart rate when you use a compatible HR belt. All data is stored in a diary so you can chart your progress, find your strengths and weaknesses, and share with others. Millions of downloads worldwide —join the team."

The major sensor for the application is the GPS, for location, together with the accelerometer, for step counting. However, as in earlier versions of the application, you can also pair the application with a 'Polar for Nokia' heart rate monitoring belt, to really integrate your physical workout into the stats. The Polar for Nokia accessory was only ever officially available as part of the N79 Active bundle, but we suspect Sports Tracking Technologies might make these available in the future.

The Sports Tracker application has been significantly reworked, with a more focused and streamlined UI. You are able to start tracking an activity (walking, running, cycling, skiing, custom 1, custom 2) in just a few steps. 

During an activity, the critical information (pace, distance, time) is shown on the screen, with location tracked on a map (using data from OpenStreetMap). The software supports laps, either manually or automatically, which is ideal for circuit-based training. At the end of an activity, a summary of the recorded information is shown on the screen (duration, distance, pace, estimated energy and steps).

Each activity is recorded in the Training Diary, which you can use to access and review any previous activity (the most recent is shown on the application's opening screen). When reviewing previous activities, you get access to the summary information, a full screen map, lap comparisons and a number of automatically generated graphs (altitude versus distance and speed versus time). With heart rate information recorded, you'll see a number of extra graphs (heart rate distribution and heart rate versus time).

As well as viewing activity information on the phone you can share any of the 'review' screens as an image via, MMS, Bluetooth, Email, or Web upload (Share online). By default Share online, on most Nokia phones, includes Ovi Share and Flickr, but it can be extended to other services, such as Facebook and Twitter, using furtiv's Share online plug-ins. 

As an alternative, the application includes supports exporting to Google Earth (KML), GPX, XML and CSV.

Earlier versions of Sports Tracker allowed you to upload data to sportstracker.nokia.com for web based sharing and display (e.g. it showed photos taken during the activity period). The new version has the same upload functionality, but the online portion of the service is not yet active, presumably due to the switchover from Nokia to SST. If you do try and upload an activity you see a message saying "our completely renewed online service for easy sharing and enhanced data visualisation will be launched later, stay tuned for an update", which sounds promising.

Thanks to Biskero.org for the tip.
   

More information

Sports Tracking Technologies

Sports Tracker on Ovi Store

News Discussion

Quote:

Originally Posted by slitchfield @dannieboy: Yes, this new Sports Tracker works fine on the i8910 HD. At least on mine 8-)

Steve, when you say yours, i assume you mean the one with the modified custom firmware, right?

Quote:

Originally Posted by VoReason How is it madness? Why do you expect Nokia to allow their applications to work on Samsung or Sony Ericsson phones? Seriously, what you said was silly.

Sports Tracking Technologies has been spun off into a separate company. Since they aren't Nokia, it's not that far fetched that they try to maximise their market by supporting all Symbian^1 handsets.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmvdinis Why are you people happy with the map change? This maps are really bad!

This is a fantastic move, as the trails people leave when running can then be fed into OpenStreetMap, to enhance the maps further. OpenStreetMap is, as the name implies, the wiki of GPS data, a totally open street map, driven entirely by the community, not a 'we'll let you use it for free, but you have to abide by these conditions, and we could change our mind at any point if you decide to compete with us' google or nokia 'free' product. Open street map is licensed such that the maps will always be available for free. No ads, no crap, no 'benevolant' search or phone giant propped up behind them, just maps, which are getting better all the time. fwiw, the maps have gotten a LOT better lately, and with all the extra data they'll be collecting, expect even further advances. and if it doesn't have your street name right.. Just login and fix it!

http://www.openstreetmap.org/

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