Nokia Sports Tracker first impressions

June 12, 2008 in Gadgets, Working Out
Tags: exercise, facebook, garmin, gps, jogging, kml, n95, nokia, running, sports, Working Out

I’m really pleased with my new Nokia N95. One of my favourite features has to be the GPS, but I got a bit bored with the Maps functionality after about a week, since I know my way around pretty well, and I’m pretty handy with an A-to-Z.

Today, however, I stumbled across the Nokia Sports Tracker. It is an application aimed at runners/cyclists/hikers, which captures GPS data for a session – or ‘work out’, and allows you to upload it to their website, where you can monitor your progress, view routes on a map, share routes with other people and comment/review your and your friend’s workouts.

What impresses me most about the Sports Tracker application is the social element. While Nokia could have just developed the application for the handset and been done with it, they went one step further and added the social element.

Even better, Nokia have also taken steps to ensure that non-Nokia user’s aren’t completly excluded:

For participating and uploading your own tracks you need Nokia Sports Tracker application installed on your Nokia phone (S60 3rd edition). If you don’t have a phone, you can manually upload your existing tracks in common “GPX” data format (import functionality has been tested using GPX files generated by Garmin(tm) devices).

While I can’t find any direct link to an API, there does appear to be an official Facebook application, although it doesn’t seem to work for a lot of people (me included). The application on the handset does allow you to export data in a variety of formats however: Google Earth (KML), GPX, XML and CSV.

This fits in quite well with my new fitness regime, and as of yesterday I’m playing football weekly with some guys from work. If I can keep that up and get out for a run a couple of times a week then hopefully I won’t be such a flabby tub of lard ;-)

For anyone who does sign up, check out my profile.