Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Nokia N95 gets a step counter

step counter


It seems that Nokia N95's built-in accelerometer is the hottest news around these days. Ever since the plug-in allowing 3rd party applications access to its data went public applications have been popping up constantly.

The latest of them is the Activity Monitor and is developed by Nokia guys themselves as an alternative for the Sports tracker application. It basically acts as an electronic diary, storing summaries of your activity loads.

step counter

Thanks to the accelerometer the Activity monitor is able to count the number of steps, the distance covered and the energy expended during each training session. Well actually the distance and energy are estimates based on your age and height but on most cases these should be pretty accurate.

Mentioning accuracy, the developers suggest that you should attach the phone to your belt or upper arm to achieve best results. You can also place it in your pocket and it is still said to work well, but if you put it in a bag that you hold in hand underestimation of your steps is quite probable. Inevitably sometimes false step are detected and as the authors say this is mostly when cycling or driving.

step counter

The Activity Monitor is currently available for Nokia N95 and N95 8GB. The Nokia N95 classic needs a memory card in order to run the application. Also be aware that the Activity Monitor drains quite a large amount of battery power thanks to the constant use of the accelerometer so you might want to switch it off when you are not doing laps on the stadium.

step counter

On a different note we want to remind you that today another cool application, using the accelerometer is expected to be released. The RotateMe, which will allow the screen of Nokia N95 and N95 8GB to automatically rotate is developed by Oueldi Samir and at least on the demo videos it seems to perform great. We are yet to test to the application and see if it is actually that good.

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