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HeartRate posts

Nokia N79 Active to come with heart rate monitor, guilt

by Chris Ziegler posted Jan 14th 2009 @ 1:23PM

We knew something was up with these Bluetooth heart rate straps from Polar, and sure enough, Nokia has announced a partnership to get serious fitness monitoring integrated with its products. The first to take advantage will be a special version of the N79, creatively dubbed the N79 Active, which will include 4GB of onboard memory the requisite strap right in the box and sell for about €375 ($494) when it ships "soon" in "select territories." Of course, the new hardware isn't any good without new software, and it just so happens that the N79 Active will include a new version of Nokia's Sports Tracker app for keeping tabs on workouts. We'd heard that other Polar accessories like cadence sensors for biking fanatics were in the works, so this could end up developing into a whole franchise.

[Via All About Symbian]

Polar's Bluetooth heart rate monitor (for Nokia?) gets FCC approval

by Chris Ziegler posted Jan 13th 2009 @ 6:47PM

Huh, wonder what's under that white sticker! Don't suppose it could be a "Polar for Nokia" logo, could it? We're betting it is, which means fitness freaks with Finnish phones banded to their arms should be able to start tracking their grueling 20-mile jogs through San Francisco before too long. We know it's Bluetooth, we know it straps to your chest, and we know the all-too-sparse draft manual identifies the pod as the WearLink+, but that's about all we know. Anyone stoked about this?

Nokia hooking up with Polar for fitness monitoring?

by Chris Ziegler posted Dec 21st 2008 @ 2:23PM

Nokia's been pushing its exercise logging solution, Sports Tracker, for a while now -- but compared to dedicated fitness computers from companies like Suunto, Garmin, and Polar, it's not quite as useful since you can't automatically record your heart rate. For serious health nuts, that's a deal-breaker right there, but rumor has it that Nokia has now teamed up with Polar (another Finnish company, coincidentally) to deliver everything the average runner needs to start sending vital stats straight to their phones. It gets better: besides Bluetooth chest straps, we're hearing there'll be compatible cadence sensors (for bikers) and barometer / altimeters, too. The whole initiative is apparently in the final stages of development, so we wouldn't be surprised to see it officially announced either at CES or MWC. Ugh, this means we no longer have an excuse not to get off our lazy asses and jog, doesn't it?

Microsoft researchers unveil Fone+, MPTrain mobile applications

by Darren Murph posted Jul 17th 2007 @ 7:11PM

Joining the growing list of up and coming software touched by Microsoft is a number of wireless applications showed off at a summit in the firm's hometown. Most interesting was Fone+, which was described as a "product that lets users connect their mobile phones to a TV, a keyboard, and a mouse" in order to convert their set into a web browsing portal. Of course, we North Americans would probably just tether our mobiles to a laptop to enjoy big screen surfing, but this device will be aimed at nations such as a China "where PC penetration is still quite low but mobile phone ownership is high." Next up was MPTrain, which wed a heart rate sensor with a tempo analyzer to allow runners to "use music players in their mobile phones to set their workouts." Granted, it's not like we don't already have similar alternatives, but this method removes the need for a certain DAP to be on your person in order to tune your workout. As expected, no release dates for these ideas were noted, but hopefully they'll end up a bit more convincing than prior attempts.