Nokia’s SportsTracker is rather wicked

SMS Text News contributor, James Whatley, was telling me the other day he thoroughly enjoyed using the new (beta) Nokia SportsTracker service. It’s designed primarily for joggers who want to track their progress using their phone and it’s GPS element.

Unfortunately James forgot to switch it off on his train ride to London and as a result, the system has him jogging at an average of 30mph for about 40 minutes. Heh.

I thought I’d try it out. Not jogging. But walking.

And here are the results:

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I just downloaded the app from the beta labs site, switched it on, created an account in 2 seconds and pressed GO.

Smart. It’s recorded speed, location, the whole shebang.

Now, it’s gone a wee bit wonky somehwere as, if you have a look at the map, you’ll see a black line going ‘through’ some buildings now and again. That wasn’t me. It was probably the GPS signal going a bit squiffy. It won’t have helped that I was walking, stopping all the time (crossing the road) and only going a short distance, I don’t think.

But if you were jogging round London — or a big park, for example, this will be a genius service.

I’m delighted that Nokia — at least some parts of Nokia — have got to grasps with point and go. It just works. And that’s the way it should be. Brilliant.

More info and download for most N or E-series here.

  • It's the internal GPS that's the problem. If you use a half-decent Bluetooth GPS you'll have very few, if any, walking-through-brick-wall errors.
  • Ah gotcha!
  • Mike42
    Yep, it's a daily companion for the trot with cez hound.

    They need to automate the upload of tracks and images - right now it's a click-click-clickfest to do what should be automatic.

    But once it's uploaded, the export to Google Earth is dead easy. Can even see the spot where said hound usually pauses for that brief interaction with ma Nature. Annoyingly, I can't find an easy way of uploading images taken during a workout to Picasa. Need to join the dots there Nokia.

    The GPS track is much cleaner out in the open - but you do still get hiccups that report you as doing 25MPH. Now that's one quick puppy.

    Overall I give it 4 steaming piles of puppy love, for ease of use, ability to track/test yourself etc. Needs work on the sharing aspect though.

    /m
  • brucerenny
    I used Sportstracker when I went skiing a couple of months ago - and it was fantastic! With its altitude tracker I could see exactly how fast, far and over what amount of ascents and descents I had skiied.
  • MarkW
    Hmm, I wonder how it would work when I'm out on my motorbike... Must give it a spin...
  • Definitely do it Mark! I was thinking of using it to track my visit to Nottingham!
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