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UP Fitness tracker vs. iPhone apps

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I have been playing with fitness trackers for about a year now. Up until recently I was using a Jawbone UP and before that a Fitbit One but since my girlfriend lost the latter and the former broke I have had to find something else to use whilst I weigh up my options. There are rumours that Nike will be updating their FuelBand tracker but I am not the biggest fan of Nike’s apps. Perhaps if Nike bring out a waterproof band with great battery life, watch, sleep tracker and silent alarm features and the ability to track all the weird and wonderful activities I take part in then I might take a closer look. For the time being I need a plan B.

Now I bought the UP by Jawbone mostly for the silent smart alarm clock feature that wakes you during lighter sleep by detecting your deep/light sleep cycles through movement. Not an exact science but a very good approximation overall and I certainly have been waking more refreshed during the six weeks of use. The secondary reason for buying the UP was as a fitness tracker because I like data. Sure, I’m a bit of a geek.

Jawbone UP app icon

This means that neither the Fitbit Flex nor the Nike FuelBand can replace the Jawbone UP for the features I’m after because they have a silent alarm based on sleep tracking.

So I decided that I could replace one wrist band with two apps for iPhone and see how I get on. One app would replace the fitness tracker and that is simply called ‘Moves’. The other app is called ‘Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock’ and its title is fairly self explanatory. This is how I got on.

Moves
I downloaded the Moves app for iPhone (Android coming soon) and had literally no settings to play with and nothing to set-up. I would like to say that I had to enter a password, login to a service or something but really there are almost no settings available within Moves and the app only comes alive once you start using it. Say yes to using the phone’s GPS and your really are done.

Moves app icon

Some might say that an app for your phone that tracks you where ever you go is creepy. But one that maps your journeys, tells you if you were walking, running, cycling or using a vehicle might just be taking things a little too far. Except that this is its purpose and it seems to work very effectively.

An app that tracks your every move must use more battery power and this is my greatest concern. I know how distinctly average battery life is on modern smartphones although I do better with my iPhone 4S than friends with the iPhone 5. I will be comparing battery life with and without the Move app running. Apparently the app in full use, according to the Move website, can be used for a full day without significantly impacting battery life so it will be interesting to see if the app lives up to its claims.

My first journey out was to the pub for a friend’s birthday. I decided to walk the 1.5 miles to the pub and see how the app would get on. The app uses Foursquare for local places data and seems remarkably accurate. Even the routes drawn out on the map seem to be spot on most of the time and certainly close enough for the intended purpose.

In a normal day that starts with me taking my iPhone 4S off the charging dock around 0630 and I generally find the phone somewhere between 20% and 50% by 1930 and around 15% to 25% by the time I plug it back in at night.

My first day of use saw me get to 40% at 1930 and 30% by the time I went to bed at 2300. During that time it tracked a rather pathetic 5300 steps (owing to the fact I was stuck in a office all day) but, in my defence, the app had no idea I went out for a short 3 mile run once I got home.

My second day of use left me with 29% at 1700 and 20% at 1930 and the phone had switched itself off by the time I retired just after midnight. I had used the phone quite a lot more and started my day half an hour earlier but I do think the Moves app had a significant impact on battery life this day recording 7300+ steps.

Here is an example of an email export of the timeline. The bubbles show walking, running and cycling and the larger the bubble the larger the distance.

moves app bubbles

The rest of the page is taken up with a timeline. Click on the picture for the full size image.

Example Moves app exported journey

A further two days of use saw the phone completely drain and turn off whilst it was sitting on my hall table. I guess that it gave up the ghost between 2130 and 2200 each day and so would have been a real pain if I had been going out those nights. Every time I used Moves I had to charge my phone through the day and it couldn’t record any runs because it stays at home during those. I did find a slight trick to save a bit of battery life: if I turned off (double tap, hold on Moves and press the little x) the app entirely then the accuracy reduces dramatically but I can make it through a day on one charge. The reduction in accuracy meant that my days were incomplete with the app missing out some of my walks and changes of transport methods.

It’s great that Moves works out the activity so that you don’t have to stop, take out your phone, tell it you are going for a run and then tell it when you have finished. But Moves also made me realise how often I don’t have my phone on me. Get to work and set it down on the desk, return home and leave it on the hall table or go out for a run and use my Garmin Forerunner GPS watch leaving my phone at home. Wearable tech works because you don’t have to take it off even if you do have to tell it what you are doing. The bracelet form factor of the UP is definitely a winner.

The battery life of my phone is taking a huge hit from this app so the UP wins.

Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock

The app works thus:
Set the alarm time and choose the wake up phase (from 10 minuets to 90 minutes) to let the app know how early it is ‘allowed’ to wake you. I set the alarm to 0630 and the wake up period  to 30 minutes therefore I know the app will wake me between 0600 and 0630. Choose the alarm and volume or select ‘only vibration’ as I did and I also set the snooze to ‘intelligent’. Intelligent snooze only allows you to snooze to the limit of your original alarm and makes the snooze time shorter each time to help you wake up gently.

Sleep alarm app icon

You can have the app ask you to enter sleep notes and wake up mood, which are pretty self explanatory. If in doubt the instructions are excellent.

Once you have all the settings fixed to your liking the phone has to be placed in the right position. This caused me my first problem. Up until now I use a dock next to my bed so that my phone remains upright all night and I can hit the sleep/wake button for a clock should I need one. This app requires a rather different placement of your phone: under the sheet, up above and behind your pillow. The phone must be able to detect your movement through the night or it will have no idea when to wake you up. The fitted sheet on my bed is a little tight and it is a pain to shove the phone up under the corner of the sheet at night. But I’m sure I’ll get used to it. I also had to dig out an extra long charging cable so it could reach but luckily I already had one.

So you set the time, put the phone on charge and face down under the sheet in the corner of your bed and forget about it. It is important not to turn the phone off or the app will go to sleep.

At 0607 on the first morning my phone started vibrating. It successfully woke me up enough that I tapped it twice to initiate the snooze feature. Something like 7 minutes later my phone vibrated again and I got up as I pulled it from under the sheet and turned off the alarm. Success.

I used it a further five times before the fatal flaw became impossible to ignore; the vibrating phone is in direct contact with the mattress and so it is not only me that gets woken up by the alarm. Therefore the purpose of me using a silent alarm is negated – my other half wakes up either way.

There is no way this is as convenient as the Jawbone UP where the vibrate alarm being on my wrist makes it a personal alarm. This is a shame because other than the alarm on the mattress problem the app does what it is designed to do much better than the UP’s implementation in every other way. There are a greater number of settings, the alarm works better and snooze is genius in the iPhone app and basically I am waking up more refreshed. This tells me the sleep analysis is better in the phone app than the Up and that is what I was after.

Except that my other half wakes up. Doh!

Jawbone Up wins.

Conclusion
With Up winning both I should announce that I’m going to rush out and buy a new UP. But I can’t. I am annoyed that Jawbone took five days (three working days plus two days of the weekend) to contact me by email. During that time I gave up and returned it to the Apple store. The advice from Jawbone was to pick up another one because:

“The issue you have described has affected a small percentage of our user base, however such issues are not widespread.”

The problem for me is that the UP is not waterproof and I’m not sure it’s water resistant either. I also worry based on the number of complaints on the forum though I am aware that those with problems are those that shout loudest.

The truth is that I don’t feel confident about the UP and those two apps were just a hassle to use.

I’m going to wait until the beginning of July and see if there are any developments or announcements from other companies. I like this new generation of wearable technology but they are toys that I can do without. I guess Jawbone, Fitbit and Nike just need to try harder!

Click here for my Jawbone UP review.


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