Sports Tracker out and about around Edinburgh

Published by Ewan Spence at 20:48 UTC, September 3rd 2010

Steve has already taken an in-depth look at Polar Bit / Sports Tracker combination (see his review here), but now I’ve got my hands on the Bluetooth heart rate monitor so it can talk to my X6, it’s time for my opinions. But if you want the short answer, the Sports Tracker eco-system is growing and I’m loving every step they’ve taken. Read on...

During August, I’ve been cycling around Edinburgh a lot as part of my work at the Fringe festival. That’s a big cycle ride in the morning and evening from the shoreline to up the hills and into the city, plus all the scooting around between theatres, cafe’s and bars. The perfect environment for Sports Tracker.

There’s also one additional feature for Sports Tracker fans this time around, as the website/server combination has been turned on. The evolution has been well structured, from just the software on the handset, to the software and heart monitor, and now the upload an sharing facilities on-line. This is how you take a product and implement the world in stages, but without disadvantaging early adopters (in fact, you are rewarding them every step!).

So why do I like it so much? What I’ve been using it for is less the “fitness” angle of the product (although it’s nice to see that I am getting my heart-rate up into the required range each day), but the recording of my location, speeds and times as I scoot round the capital city from venue to venue.

It’s all well and good trying to guess how long a trip takes me, it’s far better to sit back at the end of a week or so of trying different routes around the compact and twisty alleyways, disused railway lines and cycle paths of my home. The simple fact that I've been able to find routes that are about five minutes faster than the visual "direct" route that you would expect to be quicker when looking at a map.

Seeing that the hill climb which took 28 minutes at the start of the month now takes just 21 minutes is a great piece of motivation to keep up the cycling now that the Fringe is over.

What’s made this fun is the addition of the website – while I can analyse the numbers on my X6 and slide around various graphs and route tracings, the ability to upload the route data and view it on a large web browser window with fast reacting graphs (I suspect powered by Flash) overlaying every single bit of data in a smorgasbord of statistics.

Love it, absolutely love it.

Okay, there are still some problems with the eco-system, and there are one or two things I’d like to change. The first I don’t think can be helped, and that’s the battery draining capability of everything. The GPS is running, there’s a Bluetooth link to the heart monitor strapped to my chest, and there’s an optional internet link to stream your data and grab the map images.

Once I forgot to switch it all off when I got to a theatre – two hours later and I’ve killed half my battery. To be honest, the biggest problem with the all-up use of Sports Tracker is remembering to get it all going before you start some serious work, and switching it all off again if you’re in the middle of a working day.

And given half a chance, I’d see if I could re-engineer the PolarBit heart monitor to work around my arm as opposed to across my chest. While it’s fine having the elastic strap holding it in place when at a gym, it’s not something that’s easy for me to wear during the whole day bouncing around Edinburgh – and it’s awkward to take off and put back on discretely. Of course our female readers are now giggling that I’m having problems with the elasticised chest band. Ssssh.

Steve wrote at that time that “it's easy to run out of superlatives when talking about Sports Tracker.” I agreed with him then, and I’d second that view now. This is an application that does its one (admittedly narrowly focussed) task in such a delightful way that you can’t help but want to keep using it.

It’s also a great demonstration of a smartphone. Forget about showing off a cute app, holding up my phone and seeing the heartbeat pulse on the screen is enough to get everyone talking. Congratulations to the Sports Tracker team for a great product, and also thanks to Nokia who were happy to spin the technology out of the Beta labs into a start-up company rather than quietly kill the code.

Even without the heart monitor, the combined smartphone and website pairing is a winner, and it’s free to download and use. There’s no reason to not become a Sports Tracker fan.

-- Ewan Spence, Sept 2010.

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