Exercise, I am reliably informed, is apparently a good way to “lose weight” and “get fit”, as well as “not get diabetes”. With this in mind I have recently taken to wheezily jogging around my estate of an evening, but as you can imagine this was not before an enormous amount of procrastination. Choosing the correct running shoes was only part of the problem (or way to put off the inevitable) – I also had to make sure I was using the correct GPS tracking running app on my phone.
Runner is one of the many exercise tracking apps available, although it is specifically geared towards running (or jogging) and it’s also free. It boasts some great features such as complete tracking of times, averages, distances, speeds and calories burned, as well a small history of your recent runs, which can also be rendered via Google Maps.
A feature I particularly enjoyed is the voice-over, which can tell you how fast you’re going, how long you’ve been running and what distance you’ve covered. Thanks to Android’s lovely multi-tasking, you can even use this feature while listening to the music app. It’s genuinely encouraging when you’re trying to reach a certain distance on each run.
The only drawback with this app is that it will only store the details of your 5 most recent runs. If you want a more complete history you will need to pay for the company’s SportsTracker app, currently at £5.99 in the market. Aside from this, you can’t really ask for more features in a free app. Perhaps the company just realised that 5 is the number of runs a middle aged man will attempt before giving up on exercise and going back to crying into a bag of crisps at night instead? QR code below!
HTC’s 4.3″ dual-core Android model, powered by Qualcomm’s all-new S4 processor. It’s smaller than the enormous One X, but is it as nice as its bigger brother? (SPOILER: Yes it is).
HTC is very much B-A-C-K at the top of the Android world with this, its quad-core flagship for 2012. Great camera, huge 4.7″ display and Android 4.0 running beautifully well.
Sony returns with an all-new mobile design for 2012, pairing a dual-core processor with a 720p display. It’s a lovely phone, but is it enough to end our Samsung and HTC obsession?
LG’s updated Prada phone comes with an absolutely crazy black & white theme, but is it just for fashionable suit wearers who want to make themselves look a bit more interesting?
Daniel
/ August 21, 2010Personally I find Runkeeper the best running app – it’s free, well-designed, stores ALL of your run information online (where it has graphs you can check), posts automatically to facebook and twitter (if you want it to) and… can even track you run live and allow friends and family to see how youre doing at that very moment using the website.
So, check out Runkeepr :)
Tim B
/ August 21, 2010Thanks Daniel, I’ll check it out. The live tracking sounds useful, just in case I have a coronary on the way and someone needs to send help!