Five ways to get fit with your mobile phone

Five fitness apps and features

16 January 2009 17:09 GMT / By Chris Hall

With the lines blurring between sports training devices and mobile phones, we take a look at five ways to get fit with your mobile phone.

Samsung miCoach
With adidas collaborating on the project, this was sure to be a winner. miCoach pairs up a Samsung mobile phone with a heart rate monitor, foot pod and armband to give you a complete training solution. With a dedicated miCoach button on the handset and website to record all your training, it’s hard to go wrong, but you will have to pay for the phone, or sign-up to a contract to get it.

The Great Trainer
A free app from trainingroom.taketothestreets.org, which partners a comprehensive website, allowing you to sign-up to training plans and track your progress. The application supports a wide range of handsets for example your BlackBerry, taking advantage of the integrated GPS. It will track the basics, such as distance covered and average speed and pace, and give you are degree of workout setup. You can also get a grid reference at the press of a button. Available on a variety of phones, head over to the website to check it out.

Nokia Sports Tracker
Comes pre-installed on some Nokia devices, and is available as a free download for compatible handsets. Nokia Sports Tracker again takes advantage of the phone’s GPS, to track your activity and record your workouts, which can be uploaded onto the website. Expanding this offering comes the new N79 Active, which adds a Polar heart rate monitor belt into the mix, making the already comprehensive offering even more compelling.

Sony Ericsson Fitness
Less high-profile than other applications, the W710 and W580 use the on-board motion sensor as a pedometer to track the time and distance covered based on the number of steps you take. This data can then be analysed with Fitness Result Manager. Less comprehensive than the other offerings, but it does have the advantage of working easily on the treadmill, as you don’t need a GPS for it.

StepTrak Lite App for Apple iPhone
A free app for the iPhone and iPod touch, it basically counts your steps in the same way a pedometer does. You can set it to monitor both walking and running and even let it tweet your results at the press of a button. You can even listen to music at the same time. The catch though is that it will only work when you've got the app on (Apple rules) and that if you take a call and carry on walking it won't track you pacing up and down. Still if you're keen to see how far you walk in a day, this is one way to do it.