Every step counts

Ever since the iPhone 5s I’ve been tracking my steps with its build-in motion tracker. I kept track of them with Pedometer++ and things were great.

The iPhone’s tracker is fairly accurate and David Smith’s app displays your steps in a minimal but clear interface.

Fast forward a year or two and the iPhone’s data also shows up in the Health app. I never used the app a lot since Pedometer’s widget in Notification Center is more convenient and frankly, Health app isn’t very clear on data.

A few weeks ago I bought a Pebble to try out the entire smart watch idea. In short: I’m sold.Thanks to some good Jawbone integration the watch now also keeps track of my steps and shows my progress even more convenient than Notification Center did. My steps show up right on my wrist and take only a casual glance to keep me posted. Honestly, it’s even a bit addictive.

The Pebble syncs those steps back to Jawbone’s platform, which then via the Jawbone Up app also syncs back to the Health app.. and that’s were things go a bit wrong… Somehow by tracking my steps on both the phone and the watch and syncing them to the same backend my steps aren’t measured correctly anymore. Instead of walking 8000 steps a day, I log somewhere in the vicinity of 15000 steps, or double what I really do.

It’s a good example of how the Pebble is more a hack on top of iOS than a real integration.For the time being I’m ignoring what my iPhone or Healthkit says and I only check my watch to see my progress. Convenience wins over integration.Since the Pebble can’t import step updates from external sources it still shows only what it itself measured, and a glance is far easier than opening up Notification Center every time.

When the Watch arrives I hope Apple has taken this into account and filters the data from both Pedometers before importing it into the Health app.