
The Pebble smartwatch finally does real fitness tracking - akirk
http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/15/10138298/pebble-health-tracking-update-stanford-smartwatch-fitness
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jefflinwood
Fitness tracking and notifications are the two "killer apps" for my Apple
Watch. It's exciting that Pebble has now added fitness to its existing
notifications capability, especially now that they are working with Stanford.

I'd never used a FitBit or similar fitness tracker before getting my Apple
Watch, but I had been a huge Garmin GPS watch fan for running and biking in
the days before my iPhone had enough battery life to last for a run with GPS
enabled.

At first I thought I was mostly going to use the Apple Watch in conjunction
with planned activities like running a few miles - I certainly use it for
that, in conjunction with Runkeeper - but now I also use the passive activity
tracking to keep track of how I'm doing throughout the day.

I won't say that it's strictly because of the watch, but I'm now about as fit
as I've ever been, and I think the easy glance over to see where I'm at is
really helping with that.

~~~
adrtessier
> I won't say that it's strictly because of the watch, but I'm now about as
> fit as I've ever been

I will gladly credit my Fitbit Aria scale for the same result.

Interestingly, it is less for the feedback if gives me in the short term and
rather the long-term graphs. I know that if I want to manipulate the scale up
or down in weight and fat percentage, I have to be consistent over really long
periods of time. I almost never miss days running or at the gym, my days of
heavy drinking are long behind me, and I feel orders of magnitude better than
I have in years past. These systems really are fantastic tools, and show that
the application of game mechanics can be a force for enacting strong positive
change on a personal level.

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unicornporn
Do any of these fancy fitness gadgets offer data analysis and reports without
sending all my data to a remote server? Can't really fathom how few people
seem have doubts about sending all their sleep and movement data to god knows
who.

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nextos
I'd really like to see autonomous watches with GPS, providing minimal
smartphone functionality (navigation, calls and messages), plus serious
fitness tracking.

But at the same time I'm hesitant to wear one of those devices without
reasonable guarantees big brother is not collecting data. Therefore, something
like AsteroidOS seems ideal: [http://asteroidos.org/](http://asteroidos.org/)

~~~
nl
You know about the Garmin watches, right? They'll do navigation and (some)
message notifications.

Some reading:

[http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2014/11/winter-gadget-
recommendat...](http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2014/11/winter-gadget-
recommendations.html)

[http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2015/12/garmin-
forerunner-630-dep...](http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2015/12/garmin-
forerunner-630-depth-review.html)

Polar, TomTom etc have similar devices, but Garmin are probably the default
choice.

~~~
nextos
Thanks, I've used Polar HRM since the late 90s, and then switched to Suunto
GPS-enabled watches.

But I'd prefer something with a bit more features. Something that can replace
very very casual smartphone use. Receive a short call, navigate somewhere. And
track my fitness all the time, including HRM w/o band and blood pressure.

~~~
nl
The VivoActive is pretty nice.

But no mainstream[1] smart watches can _replace_ a phone - they act to
supplement it

[1] I think there is an LG watch with a SIM in it, but it has limited
availability.

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verusfossa
This is cool, but can I easily dump and analyze my own data? Hopefully there
is some API to foster visualization applications or at least a way to dump it
externally. Needing to rely on one or some assortment of predefined apps
always makes me feel like it's not my data.

~~~
qzervaas
If you're on iOS, my understanding is Pebble will write to the Health app.

From there you can analyze the data. You can't export directly using the app,
but you can view all records or find one of many apps that support HealthKit
which may possibly export for you.

