Category Archives: fitness

Xiaomi Shows Off New Product Line Up

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In a keynote online presentation today, Xiaomi showed off its upcoming new Mi products in a range of categories from smart bands to scooters. The company is 10 years old in 2020 and is ranked 24th in Boston Consulting Group’s 50 most innovative companies, with its smartphones ranked in the top 5 in over 40 companies. Xiaomi has built a large ecosystem of consumer electronics, wearables, TVs, scooters, smart home devices and smartphones.

Here are the new devices announced.

Mi Smart Band 5

Xaoimi’s fitness trackers have been previously well received (over 100 million sold) and I think we can expect the same for the Mi Smart Band 6. Available from tomorrow priced at only GB£39.99, the Mi Band 5 will come in six fun colours, including a bang on trend camo green (which is described as mint green in the presser – best to check). The Mi Band has a 1.1″ AMOLED display (126×294 px), Bluetooth 5.0 BLE and is water-resistant to 5 ATM or 50 metres for swimming and snorkeling.

In terms of activities, the Band 5 supports eleven exercise types, with five new ones including yoga, skipping rope and elliptical trainer. The heart rate tracking has been improved by up to 50%, there’s better sleep monitoring and brand new stress detection. Female owners can track menstrual cycles with helpful reminders.

There’s up to 14 days of battery life and is charged via a magnetic coupling. You can also use the Mi Band as a remote shutter for your smartphone camera.

Available from tomorrow (16 July) priced at €39.99 from mi.com/uk. UK pricing will be confirmed then.

Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 Basic

The Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 Basic provide 5 hours of listening time per charge with the charging case able to deliver three further charges. Charge time is about 90 minutes and the case is charged via USB C. Hurrah!

With Bluetooth 5.0 BLE and a range of 10 m, the Mi Earphones offer all the usual features including dual mic environmental noise cancellation, auto pause when removing an earphone and support for the SBC/AAC codec. The Earphones work with both Android and iOS. Availability is from 16 July for an extremely reasonable GB£49.99 from mi.com/uk.

Mi Electric Scooter 1S and 2 Pro

With rental electric scooters now legal in much of the UK, there’s hope that personal scooters will be usable soon too.

Xiaomi announced two new electric scooters, the 1S and 2 Pro for the UK. Powered by a 300W motor, the Pro 2 can reach speeds of 25 km/h with a range of 45 km depending on terrain, taking in slopes of up to 20%. Weighing just over 14 kg, it can be folded up in less than three seconds. The Pro 2 comes with lights, reflectors and disc brakes. The Pro 2 is priced from €499.

The 1S is a slightly less powerful model (250W) which still reaches 25 km/h. Range is reduced to 30 km and can only tackle 14% gradients hills, but the benefit is less weight at 12.5 kg. The 1S will cost €399.

UK availability and pricing to be confirmed.

Mi TV Stick

The Mi TV Stick is an AndroidTV 1080p media streaming with Chromecast built-in and a Bluetooth remote control. Prices will start from €39.99.

Mi Curved Gaming Monitor

It’s a whopping 34″ curved gaming monitor with a 21:9 WQHD display supporting a 144 Hz refresh rate. That’s big…Pricing starts at €399.

Redmi 9 Smartphones

Xiaomi updated its entry-level phone series, Redmi, with the 9, 9C and 9A. Some of these have been available in other countries but they’re now officially coming to Europe.

  • Redmi 9 – 6.53″ display with Helio G80 chipset, 5020 mAh battery, quad rear camera and NFC. 3GB+32GB version is €149. 4GB+64GB is €169.
  • Redmi 9C – 6.53″ display with Helio G35 chipset, 5000 mAh battery, triple rear camera. 2GB+32GB is €119, 3GB+64GB is €139.
  • Redmi 9A – 6.53″ display with Helio G25 chipset, 5000 mAh battery, 13 MP rear camera. 2GB+32GB is €99.

Overall, that’s a pretty impressive selection of products coming from Xiaomi in the next few months.

Fitbit Announces New Models and Drops Old Ones

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Fitbit has announced a handful of new wrist-worn trackers; the Versa Lite, the Inspire, the Inspire HR, and finally for kids, the Ace 2.

The Versa Lite is available now for GB£150 with a choice of four different colours – white, lilac, marina blue and magenta – and differs from the more expensive Versa by dropping a few features. Missing from the Lite are floors climbed, swim lap tracking, on-screen workouts and music player functionality. Personally, I’d miss the swim lap tracking but if you’re more of track and field person, the Lite version might save you £50. It’s still water-resistant to 50m, so good for surface swimming, and the Versa Lite will go four days between charges.

The Inspire and Inspire HR slot into the lower end of the Fitbit line-up, replacing both the Alta and Flex product lines. Priced at £70 and £90 respectively, the key difference between the two is that the HR has constant heart rate monitoring. Both devices do activity and sleep tracking, calories burned and connect to your smartphone for notifications, but if you want heart rate measurement and sleep cycle tracking, you’ll need the HR and an extra £20. Battery life is around five days for both devices and they’re water-resistant to 50m.

For children, Fitbit have the Ace 2, which will be coming out later in the year. Building the original Ace, the new version even more child-friendly but still does all the usual activity-tracking stuff with a touchscreen that can be customised with new faces. As with the Ace, the tracker becomes part of a family group so parents can monitor their little darling’s activity. 50m water-resistance and five day battery life. Price hasn’t been announced, but the current Ace is £80 so expect something similar.

Sadly, it looks like the Fitbit Zip has followed the One into obsolescence as neither are now available in the UK store. Mind you, the Zip’s had pretty good run (sorry) for a gadget, originally coming out in 2012.

And by pure coincidence, I’ve been notified today by my Fitbit app that I’ve got the Earth badge, which is equivalent to 12,713 lifetime kilometres.

Replacing the Strap on a Fitbit ChargeHR

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Heart rate monitoring is a standard feature for wrist-worn devices today, but this first came to Fitbit’s product line with the ChargeHR in 2016. I’ve had mine for over two years now, and time hasn’t been kind to it. The strap’s bubbled up and the plastic’s degraded and cracked. The electronics still work fine but the ChargeHR was designed as an integrated unit and there isn’t an easy way of replacing the strap….at least not officially. Fortunately, third parties offer replacements for not very much money. I purchased a metal one with a Milanese bracelet for GB£10 via a seller on Amazon and I’m really pleased with the outcome. Here’s how to replace the strap on a Fitbit ChargeHR. Warning – this procedure is carried at your own risk.

Having learned from my experience, my first suggestion would be cut away the strap about an inch above and below the central electronics. It’s much easier to do the repair without the broken strap flapping around. Get the replacement kit out – there should be the case+strap, a tiny screwdriver, replacement screws and a spudger.

Next, turn the ChargeHR so that the display is downwards and you are looking at the back with the charge port and the pulse sensor. Look for four small screws in the corners of the unit. Use the supplier screwdriver to carefully undo all four screws and remove them from the ChargeHR. Put the screws to one side but you’re probably not going to be using them again.

The electronics unit is held in the case by a couple of plastic clips on each side. Use the spudger to push down the left and right sides between the unit and the case. It’s quite fiddly just to get the spudger in the slot.

At this point the electronics unit will come free and can be taken out of the old case. Left behind is a small NFC-style sticker which needs to be peeled off and stuck inside the new case. You’ll need fingernails to do this, but once you’ve unpeeled, it simply stick it into the new case in the same position and orientation. Here you can see the sticker in the new case. Try and line it up just below the screen.

Once the stickers in place, give the inside of the new case a quick clean, getting dust and smudges off the inside of the display window. Now just push the ChargeHR electronics into the case. It should clip-in positively.

Finally, put the screws back in and use the screwdriver to tighten them up. Use the new screws that came with the replacement kit.

And that’s it. Press the side button and toggle through the display elements, checking that everything still works. I replaced mine about two weeks ago now and I’ve had no issues. Syncing still works fine, though the vibrating alarms are a bit more rattly. I suspect that’s more to do with the metal case than anything else.

If you want to see more, then I’ve a complementary video on YouTube.

 

 

Oaxis Combines Fitness Tracker with Analogue Watch

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That spot on your wrist is in high demand at the moment. From Apple Watches to smart watches, retro digital and vintage automatics, they all want in on that skin real estate. Personally, I still like a watch with hands to tell me that I’m late but I do like step counting and heart rate monitoring too. Consequently, I tend to swap what’s on my wrist depending on activity: it’s not ideal but works for me…mostly.

There might be an improved solution to my problem with a new watch launching on Kickstarter by epaper experts Oaxis. iPhone owners might know the company for their InkCase which provides a second epaper screen on the back of the phone. In this instance, Oaxis are crowd-funding Timepiece, a minimalist analogue watch with an embedded fitness tracker than displays data in a small OLED display in the dial.

The watch uses a Swiss quartz movement from Ronda and the fitness tracker records heart rate, steps, sleep and call / text notifications. As you’d expect, there’s a complementary app to get the data off the watch with Bluetooth. The info only mentions an iOS app, so you might want to confirm there’s going to be an Android app too.

There’s a range of combinations of case, strap and size, with both 38 mm and 41 mm cases. The black dial with red hands looks particularly good but the white dial looks classy too. I’m not sure if its just the lighting but sometimes the white dial has black hands and sometimes they’re silver. Case is a little over 12 mm thick.

And unlike certain other smartwatches, Timepiece will last a month on a single charge – charging is done via a small dock. One of the other cool features is that the time can be set via a Bluetooth connected smartwatch.

The watch is waterproof to 30 m, which means that it’s ok for a bit of light swimming.

If you like the look of this, head over to the Kickstarter campaign. Early birds can get in for US$123, GB£95 or €110.

Delivery is expected in March 2019 and as with all things crowd-funding, don’t pay what you can’t afford to loose.

 

Fibion Brings Science To Activity Tracking (Part 2)

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In the first interview, I chatted with one of Fibion’s partners, Olli Tikkanen, about their approach to activity tracking and how the Fibion team can produce accurate data on movement and lifestyle from the Fibion tracker. This time, I’m speaking with Jonathan Bloomfield, MD of Support2Perform, Human Performance Specialists, here in Northern Ireland, who use Fibion trackers to carryout assessments on clients.

The team at Support2Perfom use the Fibion tracker and the analysis tools to do a deep dive into the wearer’s daily behaviour. The tracker is typically worn for about a week before the data is uploaded and analysed. The results are displayed in different graphics to show the person’s activity in a meaningful way. How much of my day is sitting around?

 

 

This data forms the baseline for change and having made lifestyle changes, the Fibion analysis can be redone to check that they’ve had the desired effect.

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Fibion Brings Science to Activity Tracking (Part 1)

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Fitbits and other activity trackers are popular: I see them on the waists and wrists of colleagues everyday and I have one myself. Good as they are at encouraging activity, they tend to be a fairly broad brush with an emphasis on hitting targets, typically 10,000 steps. While some trackers attempt show the breadth of activity across the day, they’re not very good at the detail. When was I sitting? When was I standing? How often did I stand up?

The team at Fibion can help answer these questions with their professional sitting and activity analysis, which aims to move away from the gamification of fitness to a scientific assessment for improving health. By combining the Fibion device with algorithms based on scientific research, the Fibion analysis gives accurate results for a week-long measurement, showing how much time is spent sitting versus standing and active.

The device itself might be considered overly plain, but that’s by design. If you don’t see your steps, there’s no incentive to do more, and so the Fibion is more likely to record a representative lifestyle. It’s all about the science.

In the first of two conversations, I interview Fibion partner Olli Tikkanen on their approach and the dimunitive tracker. In part 2, I’ll talk to a professional who uses Fibion to assess activity in the workplace.

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