When a major hardware company come to the realization that it needs to launch an accompanying mobile app with its product, it tends to focus on the two biggest mobile platforms; iOS and Android. And rightly so as a recent collection of statistics has suggested that as of June 2014 those two platforms account for almost 90% of the smartphone market. With that said, it’s extremely important to not only remember, but also consider catering for growing options such as Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform. Fitbit, the manufacturers of the Fitbit Flex and other powerful wearables, provided some good news a few weeks ago by announcing that it was building a native experience for Windows Phone 8.1 users, with that app now being live on the Windows Phone Store for immediate download.
If you haven’t been following the emerging market for health and fitness based wearables then you can consider Fitbit as one of the industry leaders. The company’s wristbands are considered to be some of the most powerful and accomplished options available today and can assist with sleep monitoring and health management as well as provide a fairly comprehensive overview of the owner’s fitness in general. All of the data that is collected by the hardware is analyzed, stored and fed back to a connected native mobile app. Fitbit can now officially include Windows Phone 8.1 users as part of its collective.
One of the great things about the Windows Phone variant of the app, and something that will definitely put a smile on the face of Fitbit hardware owners, is that it provides an extremely impressive user-experience. The existence of fully automatic and wireless data synchronization over Bluetooth 4.0 will ensure that all data from Fitbit activity and sleep trackers will be seamlessly transferred to the device with minimal input from the user. It’s also extremely easy to interact with that data through the app by viewing real-time and historical statistics as well as being able to have the data presented in a beautiful graphical format.
The 14 megabyte download ships with a food-tracking system that contains more than 350,000 foods in the database to allow users to track daily calorific and macronutrient intake. There’s also a plethora of built-in motivational tools as well as a social aspect that involves leaderboards and challenges as well as the ability to provide motivation and taunts to connections.
(Source: Fitbit for Windows Phone 8.1 compatible devices on the Windows Phone Store).
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