Microsoft revealed today that the new Nokia Lumia 630 and 635 ship with an updated version its Bing Health & Fitness app that adds pedometer support. This capability enables these handsets to function as fitness trackers, and it will be expanded to other Lumia devices at a later time.
"The Bing Health & Fitness app brings together nutrition, fitness and medical information, hundreds of workouts and tools that can be customized to your specific needs," Microsoft explains. "Today we are taking it a step further by adding a pedometer capability to the app, which will first ship with the Lumia 630 and 635. What this means is that your phone in your pocket can identify and continuously count all the steps that you have taken during the day, the calories burned and distance travelled. You can now analyze your activity and even track your goal progress over a day, week or month. Thus, with the new Bing Health & Fitness app, your phone doubles as a fitness tracker."
The pedometer functionality relies on something called Nokia SensorCore technology that allows apps to access various sensors in the handset without running down the battery. SensorCore is supported in the Nokia Lumia 1520, Icon and 930, so presumably this pedometer capability will be coming to those handsets.
I wasn't planning on getting a Lumia 630 or 635—I mean, what's the point?—but this has me wondering. But I guess I can wait until the app update ships for other phones.
