Latest news with #Fitbit
The Age
3 hours ago
- Health
- The Age
Your step count is boring me to tears (and probably everyone else too)
Once upon a time, in the distant year of 2005, when it was inconceivable that statement belts would ever be unfashionable, Special K launched a wildly exciting promotion: buy an enormous box of cereal and a pedometer might just appear inside! My memory of the specifics is a little hazy (2005, to me, will always be the era of Going Out Tops and little else), but I'm pretty sure it was a one-in-every-three-box-wins-a-pedometer situation. Fuelled by the twin desires to get our hands on this technology and to do so in the cheapest possible way, my housemate and I went off to the supermarket. We weighed a bunch of Special K boxes and emerged victorious with our very own pedometers. I wore mine to university a few times, then quickly grew discouraged that my purely incidental exercise wasn't quite hitting the mythical 10,000 steps a day goal. So I stopped wearing it, then I lost it altogether, and never gave it another thought until, well, now. If this rather tedious tale were to unfold in a contemporary setting, things would be quite different. For one, almost everyone has some form of step-measuring device in their watch, Fitbit or smartphone now, so there would be no need for cereal boxes. But also, since the heady days of boho chic and Kim Beazley's last dance (not together), the world has changed. We in the West have evolved into body data narcissists. Thanks to our smartphones, smartwatches and Fitbits, we have become obsessed not just with compiling but aggressively sharing operational information about our bodies with the world at large. Step counting is the most profoundly stupid example of this. Did you know the idea of walking 10,000 steps a day isn't rooted in modern science at all? It originated from a Japanese clock company that created a pedometer for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. They chose 10,000 steps because it was a nice, round, memorable number. The notion that this is an achievable, desirable and genuinely beneficial health goal is about as meaningful as feeling 'so special' after a bowl of cereal. While, of course, physical movement has proven benefits, the core objective of modern fitness is just part of a convenient marketing ploy. All right, so we've established that the whole premise of step counting is flawed. And that would be fine if it were just one of those we things knew but nobody talked about (like Maroon 5 having three Grammys). But these days, it's apparently a crucial part of the step-counting process to just blah blah blah about it. Loading If my Special K story happened today, I'd wear the step counter constantly. I'd talk endlessly about it, doing annoying things like announcing to the office, 'All right, I'm going for a walk to get my steps up!' or 'I'll get the photocopying, my steps are way down today.' I'd even proclaim, 'Hey everyone, did you know that I WALK?' And I'd never lose interest or stop wearing that pedometer. In fact, when I died, I'd request in my will that someone else put on my Apple Watch, so my steps could continue for time immemorial. This is because the incessant monitoring of step counts (along with sleep scores and exercise loads) has become intricately linked to our identity. Talking about your daily steps tells everyone that you have a health regimen and the emotional, mental, and financial capacity to indulge in this particular brand of self-analysis. It's showing off. A stupid flex, like carrying a huge water bottle or constantly eating fruit. Yes, I get it, you're healthy; now, please leave me alone with my idleness and my tablespoon of butter dipped in the communal sugar.
Sydney Morning Herald
3 hours ago
- Health
- Sydney Morning Herald
Your step count is boring me to tears (and probably everyone else too)
Once upon a time, in the distant year of 2005, when it was inconceivable that statement belts would ever be unfashionable, Special K launched a wildly exciting promotion: buy an enormous box of cereal and a pedometer might just appear inside! My memory of the specifics is a little hazy (2005, to me, will always be the era of Going Out Tops and little else), but I'm pretty sure it was a one-in-every-three-box-wins-a-pedometer situation. Fuelled by the twin desires to get our hands on this technology and to do so in the cheapest possible way, my housemate and I went off to the supermarket. We weighed a bunch of Special K boxes and emerged victorious with our very own pedometers. I wore mine to university a few times, then quickly grew discouraged that my purely incidental exercise wasn't quite hitting the mythical 10,000 steps a day goal. So I stopped wearing it, then I lost it altogether, and never gave it another thought until, well, now. If this rather tedious tale were to unfold in a contemporary setting, things would be quite different. For one, almost everyone has some form of step-measuring device in their watch, Fitbit or smartphone now, so there would be no need for cereal boxes. But also, since the heady days of boho chic and Kim Beazley's last dance (not together), the world has changed. We in the West have evolved into body data narcissists. Thanks to our smartphones, smartwatches and Fitbits, we have become obsessed not just with compiling but aggressively sharing operational information about our bodies with the world at large. Step counting is the most profoundly stupid example of this. Did you know the idea of walking 10,000 steps a day isn't rooted in modern science at all? It originated from a Japanese clock company that created a pedometer for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. They chose 10,000 steps because it was a nice, round, memorable number. The notion that this is an achievable, desirable and genuinely beneficial health goal is about as meaningful as feeling 'so special' after a bowl of cereal. While, of course, physical movement has proven benefits, the core objective of modern fitness is just part of a convenient marketing ploy. All right, so we've established that the whole premise of step counting is flawed. And that would be fine if it were just one of those we things knew but nobody talked about (like Maroon 5 having three Grammys). But these days, it's apparently a crucial part of the step-counting process to just blah blah blah about it. Loading If my Special K story happened today, I'd wear the step counter constantly. I'd talk endlessly about it, doing annoying things like announcing to the office, 'All right, I'm going for a walk to get my steps up!' or 'I'll get the photocopying, my steps are way down today.' I'd even proclaim, 'Hey everyone, did you know that I WALK?' And I'd never lose interest or stop wearing that pedometer. In fact, when I died, I'd request in my will that someone else put on my Apple Watch, so my steps could continue for time immemorial. This is because the incessant monitoring of step counts (along with sleep scores and exercise loads) has become intricately linked to our identity. Talking about your daily steps tells everyone that you have a health regimen and the emotional, mental, and financial capacity to indulge in this particular brand of self-analysis. It's showing off. A stupid flex, like carrying a huge water bottle or constantly eating fruit. Yes, I get it, you're healthy; now, please leave me alone with my idleness and my tablespoon of butter dipped in the communal sugar.
Tom's Guide
3 days ago
- Tom's Guide
I walked 6,500 steps with the Fitbit Charge 6 vs Pixel Watch 3 — and I'm surprised by the winner
Want the best Fitbit available today? Your choices come down to the Fitbit Charge 6 and Google Pixel Watch 3. Both devices are powered by Fitbit and produced by Google, but that's where the similarities end. The Fitbit Charge 6 was announced in 2023 and remains the brand's flagship band-style fitness tracker. The Pixel Watch 3, meanwhile, launched in 2024 and is Google's one and only smartwatch offering, though it comes in two sizes. For this test, I pitted the smaller 41mm Pixel Watch 3 ($349) against the Fitbit Charge 6 ($159). With Google winding down the Fitbit brand, there's a good chance that the Charge 6 is the end of the road for perhaps the brand's most beloved wearable line. So, is the Pixel Watch 3 a good replacement for the Charge 6, at least from a fitness tracking standpoint? There's only one way to find out. Let the test begin! The Google Pixel Watch 3 is a full-featured smartwatch with all of Fitbit's best fitness tracking and wellness features built in. Though it's considerably more expensive than the Fitbit Charge 6, the Pixel Watch 3 has way more smart features, too. It also works with a gigantic range of third-party apps. The Charge 6 does not. The Charge 6 could be one of the last devices to bear the Fitbit name. Launched in 2023, this high-end tracker sports a small AMOLED touchscreen and boasts impressive fitness-tracking chops. It also has better battery life than its modern smartwatch cousin and is lighter on the wrist. Did I mention it's also about half the cost of the Pixel Watch? If you've read my previous walk test articles, you can probably go ahead and skip to the next section. For those new here, this is how these comparisons go down: With a smartwatch on either wrist, I begin tracking my walk. As a control, I manually count each step I take; my favorite Bose Quiet Comfort headphones help drown out the distraction. To help me keep track of the total, I click an old-school manual tally counter every hundred steps before starting my tally over again at one. In this case, I repeated that process 65 times before finding a nice quiet park bench to settle down on and record the data. Oh, and as an extra control, I recorded the walk using Strava on my trusty iPhone 12 Mini. Check out the results below: Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. Fitbit Charge 6 Google Pixel Watch 3 Control Step count 6,546 steps 6,653 steps 6,500 steps (manual count) Distance 3.01 miles 3.4 miles 3.41 miles (Strava) Elevation gain no data 325 feet 303 feet (Strava) Average pace 22 mins, 21 secs per mile 19 mins, 48 secs per mile 18 mins, 20 secs per mile Average heart rate 114 bpm 114 bpm n/a Max heart rate 164 bpm 164 bpm n/a Calories burned 527 calories 529 calories n/a Device battery usage + 1% - 9% n/a Well, well, well — look at which device was closer to my actual step count total by a whole seven steps; it's the Fitbit Charge 6. For what it's worth, both devices beat Strava's tally of 6,558 steps. Unfortunately for the small but mighty Charge 6, things get a little funky when we move on to distance data. Despite nailing my step count total with impressive accuracy, the device appears to have severely undercounted my distance covered by a whopping 0.4 miles... that's not an insignificant difference. The Fitbit Charge 6 frustratingly also does not report elevation gain data, even though it technically could using the onboard GPS. And while I didn't intend for this walk to be hilly, living in Seattle, Washington, a few hundred feet of elevation gain is par for the course when cruising around town on foot. The Pixel Watch 3 does report climb data, which looks perhaps a tad inflated for this walk — I tend to trust Strava as the gold standard here — but still accurate enough for my needs. Of course, had the Pixel Watch 3 undercounted my climb by 22 feet (compared to Strava), I might not be so forgiving. Strava provides two pace metrics including an average moving pace — reported above — and an elapsed pace, which tends to be slower. In this case, my elapsed pace was 19 minutes and 15 seconds per mile, much closer to the Pixel Watch 3's metric. Inflated pace data from the Fitbit Charge 6, meanwhile, makes sense given it measured a considerably shorter walk, distance-wise. Nothing warms my heart more than two devices capturing similar heart rate data during these head-to-heads, and it doesn't get any more precise than this. The same goes for calories burned. Finally, while the Pixel Watch 3 burned through 9% of its battery during my roughly one-hour-and-seven-minute walk, the Charge 6 somehow managed to gain 1% battery (from 98% when I left to 99% when I returned). In today's battle of the Fitbit-powered Google wearables, the underdog Charge 6 comes out on top. However, even though the Fitbit Charge 6 managed a closer step count total to my manual count, the Pixel Watch 3 proved more accurate across the board. Still, I'm impressed that the older, more affordable wearable was able to keep up with the newer and higher-end Pixel Watch 3. Ultimately, the Charge 6 remains one of the best fitness trackers for the money in 2025, especially if you like easy-wearing devices with great battery and onboard GPS so that you can leave your phone at home. Which fitness trackers and/or smartwatches should I test head-to-head next? Let me know in the comments below.
Android Authority
3 days ago
- Health
- Android Authority
Samsung could soon put some Galaxy Watch features behind a paywall
C. Scott Brown / Android Authority TL;DR Samsung is thinking about a paid Samsung Health subscription, according to a company executive. The executive reportedly likened the offering to Fitbit Premium or Garmin Connect Plus. This news also comes as Samsung inches closer to introducing a paid tier for its Galaxy AI features. Samsung's Galaxy Watch line offers a variety of health and fitness features, and the company is adding even more via the One UI 8 Watch update. Now, Samsung has confirmed that it's thinking about a subscription offering for these features. Samsung's head of digital health, Dr Hon Pak, told CNET that it's considering a paid Samsung Health subscription that would be similar to Fitbit Premium or Garmin Connect Plus. The company didn't specify which features would be placed behind a paywall, but the article generally focused on Samsung's One UI 8 Watch features. Samsung's upcoming watch software offers capabilities like Vascular Load metrics, Bedtime Guidance for sleep, antioxidant detection, and more. Would you buy a Samsung Health subscription? 0 votes Yes, absolutely NaN % It depends on the features NaN % No, absolutely not NaN % The outlet also suggested that new Galaxy Watch models would get the features for free while people with older Galaxy Watches would have to pay to receive them. Samsung's disclosure also comes almost a year after the company first hinted at the possibility of a Samsung Health subscription. Back at the company's July 2024 Unpacked event, Samsung noted that 'currently available' Samsung Health features won't require a paid subscription, but cautioned that 'different terms may apply' for future features. This wouldn't be the only Samsung subscription that could debut in 2025, though. Samsung previously said that its Galaxy AI suite of features would be free until the end of 2025. So don't be surprised if the company announces a paid AI tier later this year. Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at Email our staff at news@ . You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.
Android Authority
5 days ago
- Android Authority
The Fitbit app just got a quiet Pixel Watch-inspired makeover
Kaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority TL;DR The Fitbit app has introduced a new Device Settings page for smartwatches and fitness trackers. The new layout mimics the one used in the Pixel Watch app. The device settings menu has also been updated Google has quietly updated the Fitbit app, introducing a redesigned Device Settings page for smartwatches and fitness trackers. The new look brings the Fitbit app closer to the design of the Pixel Watch companion app. The update was highlighted by 9to5Google over the weekend, but it seems to have rolled out recently, as users on Reddit have also noticed the change. While some folks (including us) welcome the modern layout of the Fitbit app, others aren't too thrilled about the sudden shift. One user who didn't know about the change even tried resetting their Fitbit Sense 2, disconnecting it, and reinstalling the app to get rid of the change. So, what's new? Well, the redesigned Device Settings page now starts with a large image of your connected device and its current watch face. Just below, you'll see important information like battery level, last sync time, and connection status. There's also a Sync now button placed in the top-right corner for easy access. New Fitbit app UI Old Fitbit app UI Below the image of the connected smartwatch or fitness tracker, you'll find cards for Watch faces, Apps, and Tiles. This layout mimics the one used in the Pixel Watch app, but tapping these cards still takes you to the same management options as before. The actual settings menu has also been updated. For example, on a Fitbit Sense 2, the settings now include: Notifications (calls, texts, app alerts) Device Preferences (wrist side, screen lock) Google Services (like Wallet and Maps) Fitbit Reminders & Alerts (move reminders, heart rate warnings) Tips & Support System (software updates, disconnect) Smart Features (like Alexa and on-wrist calling) This isn't the first big design update for Fitbit. Over the past year, Google has been constantly refreshing the app with new layouts and a cleaner UI reminiscent of other Google apps. And there are more changes on the horizon. Google will be remodelling the Fitbit app with its new Material 3 Expressive design. So while you might be surprised the next time you open the Fitbit app, know that it's part of Google's bigger plan to unify the look and feel of its apps.
