Pedometer, scales and mobile applications with Lumia 930/925

Introduction

I took for testing the new Nokia Lumia 930, guided solely by my personal interest - is it time to change my own Lumia 925 to a new business flagship? But it just so happened that a simple post about a model turned out to be a post - a description of my organization of a healthy lifestyle using available devices, a phone, and applications running under Windows Phone.


I will tell you more about this, but I'll start with a small comparison of the two Lumia models - 925 and 930. The difference in their entry into the market was about a year.

If we compare the 930 and 925 model, then the first has become much more manly. Rounded edges were replaced by hard edges, and now the phone can be put, and not just put. In theory, the 930 model should be felt in the palm of a more massive - but this does not happen - the geometric parameters are increased in such a way that the difference when wearing and talking is not felt. Although when browsing the pages, it undoubtedly is - the larger screen benefits greatly.

Photo of the phone's end with sharp edges
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Design has become more aggressive. On the 930 model added "racing" stripes. Nokia logo is shifted to the right, which seems to be a reasonable decision in the struggle to increase the screen, but preserve dimensions. The camera is removed inside the case and no longer stands out (which was a characteristic feature of the 925 model and, moreover, 1020). What was done quite coarsely in the Lumia 925 is a slot for a SIM card. On the 925 model, it is rather flimsy. This was taken into account - and in the model 930 is done securely.

By the way, the transition will have to change the SIM card. In the 930 model, it is already “nano” (or as they are called).

The operating system on both phones is the same (thanks to the developers who kept the promise on the update). Therefore, the transition from device to device is fast. The only inconvenience is that the location of the dice is not transmitted from the start screen.

Naturally, the question arises - what about speed, how does the application work, how does the game work? I will postpone this too on the chapter of conclusions.

Healthy lifestyle and telephone

As the theater begins with a hanger, so will a HLS (and further, I hope, let me use this abbreviation) begins with a telephone. Of course, there are retrogrades with notebooks, but there are few of them left (just look at the public in any gym).

This topic is very broad. Let me remind you that the victory at the 2014 World Cup is largely due to the fact that Bundestim used the mobile application to analyze the actions of the players. Therefore, we will reduce the topic and consider it on a separate individual who goes to the office every morning, and with his family on weekends he goes to his parents' house to his parents. The team does not shine, but the desire to keep yourself in good shape is present.

For me it all started with the fact that my wife gave Jawbone. An ordinary step counter with an alarm clock. I also wanted the same thing, but I realized that for him I would have to change the phone, since the model does not support Windows Phone. It was too radical a step, so I began to look for other opportunities. And I found FitBit Force - but here's a bad luck - somewhere in the UK, someone’s hands fell off with this bracelet, so it was immediately withdrawn from sale. In Moscow, it was possible to find it, but at a price twice the original.

Then I turned to PC-synchronized solutions. So I got a Garmin VivoFit along with a chest belt pulse meter. I could not see the statistics on the phone, but on the other hand, I had a watch, a heart rate monitor during a run, a pedometer in real time, and I didn’t have to take it off my hand at all (it charges once a year by replacing the battery, it sinks up to 50 meters).

You ask, and here Nokia? With that, the appetite for monitoring comes along with the possibilities. I could count the steps, could track the pulse during workouts. But Garmin was compatible with MyFitnessPal. At this stage, I was able to formulate the requirements for the software and hardware complex for a complete analysis.

Requirements

What is needed in order to monitor a healthy lifestyle?

First, it is not strange, you need to walk more. You can jump, crawl and jump, but in a big city it is best to walk. In order to track the movement always and everywhere, you need a pedometer. I can not say that this is a universal device (there are problems, for example, when walking with a stroller or a cart, bicycle), but it is better, perhaps, there is no solution. Thus, we have such an indicator as the number of steps per day.

Secondly, you need to play sports. In my personal case, it's running. Just running - without barriers, without rough terrain, without water barriers - running in the hall and the park. Here you have to combine two solutions at once. On the one hand, it is possible to track the running on the simulator only with a pedometer (if we are talking about recording devices), on the other hand, it will be possible to supplement the pedometer with a spatial reference in the park - gps tracker. Which will help (albeit not always objectively) also with climb and with the correct distance.

An additional required parameter is heart rate tracking. It is necessary, firstly, during the workout itself (it determines the current load on the body), and secondly, when analyzing the distance covered, it was how hard, where, under what conditions. If somewhere the pulse has reached 180 or more, then it may be worthwhile to think in order to reduce the tempo while passing this section.

Third, weight control. Many nutritionists console that he does not solve anything. But nevertheless, there is probably no more objective criterion. Here, probably, any calibrated scales will do. Most often, the fact that you can buy in supermarkets is practically useless. I know only one brand of electronic scales that can be considered as such - it is Tanita. Mechanical in this regard is more reliable.

Fourth, the control of food. Control is not so much the quality of food, how many calories and composition (proteins, fats, carbohydrates). Not all that you can buy is worth eating. In my humble opinion, all diets that work at least as much are built on two principles - either just eat less or eat less fat and more protein. Just eating less is boring. Every day, keeping track of what else you can eat is fun and partly effective.

Fifth, social networks. Of course, many will say - is this something to do with it? My answer is motivation. Run 10 km of the Moscow Marathon and not put in the facebook track? I laid out.

Sixth, photo. It's not even an instagram. You run 5-7-10 km. The sun is shining, smoke is spreading, others are running nearby. There are moments that you want to capture, even on the run.

Like here, when people ran along the Garden Ring, towards the dawn

And finally, the control of the duration of sleep, the amount of water you have drunk, is if everything is already promontory, but something else is not enough. Sleep control in Garmin is implemented crookedly - if you are going to fall asleep you have to hold the button for 6 seconds, and then remember to press it when you wake up. Personally, I almost always forget one or the other, and more often all at once.

That's actually the main part of my story - the realization of all this with the Nokia 930 + Garmin Vivofit + free apps + scales.

My healthy lifestyle with Nokia 930

October 7, I woke up in Berlin. I woke up the alarm phone. If I were in Moscow, I would stand on the scales, which measure the weight and percentage of body fat (I do not know why - but I write it down - although its values ​​can vary from 5-7% per day). These are the measurements we make in MyFitnessPal, GarminConnect reads them.

I got dressed and went down to the hotel lobby for breakfast, not forgetting to connect to wi-fi and open MyFitnessPal. This application provides ample opportunities for making food. Purchased in Moscow supermarkets are usually easily read by barcodes. You can create your own recipes. Thus, the caloric content and composition of products is always at hand. The application brings the dishes and tells how much more you can eat. This value is not constant, GarminConnect reads information about the completed steps and increases the “stock” of calories per day.

Snapshot from MyFitnessPal, food section

In my case there was a dense buffet. In this case, I use analogies - if the sausage is similar to the doctor’s one, it will be a doctoral one, an omelette is about the same everywhere, and yoghurts too. All this is displayed in the service. For one breakfast, I fulfilled almost the entire daily norm, if I had not moved anymore.

But it's time for a run. I put on a jacket, took a hotel card and went to the Paradestrasse station of the 6th U-line of the Berlin underground. Why here? Because the former airfield Tempelhof did not suffer the fate of Khodynka - it was given to the Berliners as a leisure zone. And what could be more entertaining than running on the runway in the morning?

And here I am at the airport. It's time to run. I run Endomondo, turn off the screen. And run on the asphalt to the horizon. If the Nokia 930 was mine - I would buy a case on my hand, but for a single run I just hold it in my hand.

Runway Airfield Tempelhof

Checking the pulse. In general, it is better to keep it up to 160. The value is a bit high - there is a risk of “boiling”. But, apparently, the headwind.

Garmin Vivofit with current heart rate output

Remembering that I promised to write a review, I make passing photos. The weather is cloudy, so I have nothing to impress the reader. But nevertheless, the stabilizer copes and the photos are quite suitable for reportage, despite the fact that they are being shot on the run.

Tempelhof aerodrome taxiway

I do a full circle on the airfield and after 8 kilometers and a half I will finish at the entrance to the airfield. I stop recording the track. In principle, if I were in Moscow, I would have laid it in immediately. But in Berlin I have to go back to the hotel, where I post it, adding photos to facebook.

Snapshot from Endomondo. No heart rate information available

It would be nice if GarminConnect and Endomondo could complement the tracks by epochs. But no. Unfortunately, the result of this run in both services looks like this: there were two of us, and we ran at the same time. And in MyFitnessPal, two workouts also go right away - one with a gps track, the other with steps and a pulse.

Snapshot from Endomondo. October 1 and 7 dubbing of training took place

It is not right. Unfortunately, my programming skills are very close to zero. Therefore, even in combining two txt files, I have to look for ready-made solutions. And they are. It is enough to export a lesson from GarminConnect and Endomondo to the .TCX format so that this small application can combine them by time stamps.

We remove workouts from both clients. And we download only the combined track. Of course, someone will say that this is not an option - but on the other hand, such runs are unlikely to be performed more than 3-4 times a week. And working with them is only a question of organization.

Photo from ConnectGarmin. Workout display and with a pulse rate, and with the tempo, and with the position.


Here you can see that the pulsomer started recording much earlier than I started (and indeed, I turned it on as soon as I left the subway). In several places it “fell off” - this is not critical, but probably it affected the average pulse (in principle, you can drive the tcx file to zero values ​​- but this is for perfectionists). On the pace line you can clearly see the moments when I took a photo. Well, in the end I'm just tired.

The rest of the day is held at the industrial exhibition. I walk and talk a lot. In the evening I am still taking pictures of Berlin at night. The number of steps reaches almost 45,000. Before going to bed, I synchronize the bracelet with GarminConnect and learn from MyFitnesPal that I could eat three big bags without harm to health. But it's' too late.

Snapshot from MyFitnessPal

He also assumes that in five weeks with such a rhythm of life I will weigh almost 20 kg less. I internally agree with him, but I suppose, with such a rhythm, I just will not live 5 weeks.

Instead of conclusion

Probably, the organizers of the test were not expecting that, but my conclusion is that there is no point in changing the Nokia Lumia 925 to 930. I could conduct my entire test on my own phone. The differences would probably be in the photo, and even then it is unlikely. For almost a year and a half, I have been using the Nokia Lumia 925, and the thought that the phone should be changed, crept in only once, when the back panel jumped out of the impact of the concrete from the aluminum frame. But then this panel was tucked back with a finger, the phone worked, and the thought of the change was gone.

Over the past year and a half, I did not remember what the processor frequency is, and how many cores are there. Unlike platforms on Android, this phone does not accumulate bugs with the duration of use. Maybe someone will disagree, but after a year of using the phone on Android, I could keep a whole list of fun adventures, such as self-dialing the director, screen hangs, or even just trips.

Everything else the manufacturer has updated the operating system to version 8.1 in previous models, so there is no difference.

Often, WP smartphones are charged with a lack of applications. I do not argue, perhaps on another platform there would be a ready-made solution right away, but nevertheless, there is everything for a healthy lifestyle. By the way, for example, Runtastic releases the all-in-one solution, which could also be considered if I had the opportunity.

You can look at the statistics of GarminConnect on Lumia. There is an AstroFitness application that reads data from the service. The application is paid, and while I do not understand why I need it.

It should also be noted that the Nokia Lumia 930 itself can work as a pedometer. Perhaps this has the right to life - but the bracelet is more convenient and versatile. In addition, there is an application "Health and Fitness". It would have the ability to synchronize - the price would not exist. Well, in the form in which it exists, it is worse in functionality than the solution I have analyzed.

And I play a little game. Zombies against plants go normally on both devices. The difference is only in the resolution of the screen.

Why not use only Nokia without a bracelet? Because winter, because now I run exclusively on the track, and in the Endomondo room I can use a little less than nothing. Nevertheless, the built-in application chain is working, and my weight is going down.