Nokia Sports Tracker was developed at Nokia’s Research Center. It is defined as “a GPS and sensor assisted sports monitoring application that runs on S60 smartphones”, but can in fact be be used to track your progress while involved in any activity that involves you moving from A to B, whether by running, cycling, walking, driving or using any other means of locomotion. [Like a JUNKERS JU-52 airplane, for example.]
It is, I think, aimed squarely at the Nike + iPod ecosystem developed by Apple and Nike around Apple’s iPod and the Nike+ brand, although it actually functions in quite a different way. For a start, unlike the Nike + iPod system, it doesn’t provide a musical accompaniment to your progress (or at least, that functionality is not incorporated into this software), or audio prompts as to your progress. However, Nokia’s software can actually record and display a lot more information. That is primarily because it relies on GPS data, rather than the motion sensing of the Nike + iPod system. You can use either your phone’s internal GPS chip, if available, or otherwise an external bluetooth GPS unit with the Sports Tracker software – I’ve been using a GlobalSat BT-359 with my Nokia 6120c with no problems whatsoever.
So, for example, the software can display all sorts of information about your progress as you are moving, including a graphical representation of the direction you have taken. It can also record the precise details of your route including information about the highest and lowest point, alongside details about the speed at which you were moving at any given point. Like the Nike + iPod system, it can store details of favourite routes and check your performance on that route from one workout to another – although again, Sports Tracker stores a lot more information about a given route.
As the software is recording so much information, it provides the opportunity to do quite a lot with it. For example, it is possible to download a particular workout in a format that will allow you to view it in Google Earth, so you can check where you really went – not just where you thought you went. All in all, I’ve been very impressed with the software and suspect I have only scratched the surface of it.
What’s been missing up until now though, is the equivalent of Apple and Nike’s nikeplus.com website that allows users of the Nike + iPod system to upload details of their workout for further analysis and comparison. Nokia have now rectified this omission with the introduction of the Nokia Sports Tracker website at sportstracker.nokia.com.
At its simplest this website is designed to allow you to upload your routes and workouts, so that you can get an overview of this information, including map details, distance and speed. You can, if you choose, share this information so that other people can compare their own progress over a similar route (or the same one should they choose to try it out). It also has a number of functions to encourage a community to build up around the site, although I’m tempted to hold off on sharing too much information until I’m running a bit further and faster myself.
The website is visually very appealing and setting up an account with the site was simple enough. You fill in a form with some basic information, including a username and password, and get sent a confirmation e-mail with a link to follow. You can also choose to register from the new version of the phone software that was released at the same time as this new service (it’s now up to version 1.63). Either way, once registered you need to pair your phone with the service (by entering your username and password), and then it’s a very simple process indeed to upload a particular workout or route to the website. Incidentally, it would be quite nice to also have the facility to download the same sort of information back to the phone.
One feature that caught my eye was the option to upload any relevant images from your workout to the site as part of the workout upload process. This uploads any GPS tagged photos taken while you were out and about and using the Sports Tracker software. This really brings home how much more this software and website have to offer beyond simple sports workouts. For example, it could be used while undertaking a gentle walk through the fells of the Lake District – something that I don’t think would come under most people’s definition of a sports workout, even if it is hard work! Or it could be used for inspecting a site, with the user taking photographs at key points, which would then be automatically tagged with the correct data and could be shown on the website along with the route taken by the person carrying out the inspection. In both cases, the name Sports Tracker and the terminology used in the application and on the site perhaps unnecessarily limit what can be achieved with it.
The website is still under development, and the implication is that Nokia are planning to do a lot more with it. One facility that might be quite nice would be the option of downloading photographs that someone else has taken of the area that you are currently in. This is something that the impressive ViewRanger mapping software already provides – although I haven’t tried it out myself yet. Nokia are talking about releasing an API for the site – so information could be fed from it to other sites, and vice versa. This would open up further opportunities for utilising the software, and is definitely to be encouraged.
All in all, I think the Nokia Sports Tracker package is very impressive indeed. What’s more, it’s free. Highly recommended.
There’s more on the Nokia Sports Tracker software and website on the Eseries blog here: Nokia Sports Tracker Beta – New Online Service
Tags: 6120c, apple, globalsat BT-359, gps, ipod, nike, nokia, s60, sports tracker
