By WILSON ROTHMAN
The Microsof Band consolidates health and fitness data from various fitness gadgets and mobile apps.Source: AP
THE giants of technology have made one thing abundantly clear this year: You’re out of shape and need their help to get fit!
Microsoft, the newest would-be coach, just rolled out a wristband-and-app pairing that was built to work with iOS, Android and Windows Phone.
Microsoft execs say the company is getting into the wearable business as a first foray into a big problem: how to identify useful intelligence in heaps of personal data.
Microsoft says it can take sensor information from wearables and interpret it in the cloud with an accuracy that less experienced firms couldn’t possibly pull off.
The evidence presented — the Microsoft Health app and the Band smartwatch, with 10 sensors — sounded promising, at least compared with the current offerings of Samsung, Google and Apple.
Shortly after I paired the $US199 wearable to my iPhone, though, things went downhill.
Like every other fitness band, this one has an accelerometer-based step counter. During a controlled test, it reported roughly the same number of steps as my phone and a cheaper wearable.
But there are a lot more sensors packed into the bracelet and it’s clear that they aren’t all equally reliable.
There’s an optical heart-rate sensor that, in the middle of a rigorous session with an elliptical machine, reported my heart pounding at 105 beats per minute (super chill) and at 208 bpm (close to collapse).
Meanwhile, my trusty elliptical confirmed I was likely somewhere between 150 and 160 bpm the whole time.
There’s GPS, which currently only draws routes of the jogs you take. It would be nice for the Band to use GPS when I’m on a bike ride.
Among the many sensors, there’s a UV sensor (tap it to find out if you’re in need of sunscreen) and a galvanic skin response sensor (whose purpose is still to be determined).
There are two problems with all this data collection. First, it creates a lot of noise that needs to be sorted out with software.
Microsoft’s goal may be to improve that kind of data interpretation, but I’m not seeing the results yet. And all those sensors also drain the battery pretty fast.
Microsoft said the Band’s battery would last up to two days, but it should have simply said “at least one day.” It died the first time in the middle of a workout, about 24 hours after I first powered it up.
With 100 per cent charge, it died after about 36 hours. Trouble is, it never warned me as it approached battery death.
Only when I tapped into the watch to do something did I get the warning that I’d better find the Band’s unique charger in a hurry. Microsoft said that the unit it lent me wasn’t performing up to expectations.
Ergonomically, the wearable is pretty terrible. It’s awkward, wide at the top while a competing product, Samsung’s Gear Fit, is smartly curved.
The Band has a clever metal clasp that slides to make a better fit, but it rubbed my wrist the wrong way. And it’s so easily scratched, it looked battle damaged by Day Two. I scraped the bezel against a wall by just shoving a box into a closet. (Microsoft says it is offering screen protectors at its stores.)
The app, however, demonstrates how far Microsoft has come on the user-interface front. Full of active tiles and slide-out menus, Microsoft Health is lively, especially when compared with Apple’s incredibly boring Health app and its clinically sterile line graphs and menus.
The Homepage gives a quick look at how I’m pacing today: Have I reached my step counting and calorie burning goals? How long ago was my last workout? How did I sleep last night?
The next page starts to get a little less helpful, recapping my specific sleep and workout activities. I can see how, if I were to be in a serious training regimen, it could be of value, but only if the sensor data was any good.
The third page is “Find a Workout,” where I can choose workout modules that sync right to the Band. Having videos explain how each exercise is done, then having the Band tell you what exercises to do and for how long, can be a nice benefit. But people who want a virtual personal trainer have a wealth of options, including the more sophisticated FitStar.
On a page labelled Connected Apps, we see the direction Microsoft would like to go. Here, you can sync your Microsoft Health data to RunKeeper and MyFitnessPal, and pull their information into your Microsoft profile. Microsoft says there is more high-quality data coming from such respected outside sources as Jawbone, which is a Microsoft Health launch partner.
In the next six months, the Microsoft Health website will launch, offering an easily searchable view of your fitness data that can answer such questions as, “Do I run better after having breakfast?”
Microsoft certainly has plans to analyse and correlate the information in ways that the individual contributors don’t have the power to do. But for now, the Microsoft Health club is feeling empty and the Band is weak.
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