Sports apparel giant Under Armour has announced the launch of a new health and fitness tracking app for iOS and Android.
The UA Record app, unveiled at CES 2015, is free to obtain from the App Store and Google Play and promises to offer a complete health and fitness picture by syncing up with other apps and devices.
The free app is capable of tracking the usual steps, calories burned, steps, sleep, distance, heart rate and weight thanks to its ability to sync with other party devices (such as your smartphone’s built-in motion sensors) and existing wearable fitness trackers.
Under Armour, of course, owns the MapMyFitness suite of applications so it has a built in portfolio of apps to feed into UA Record, but more should follow thanks to the launch of an SDK.
HTC has announced itself as the first partner to jump on board, with the Taiwanese firm pledging to design hardware specifically for use with UA Record. There's no news yet on those devices, but perhaps HTC will make an announcement at next month's MWC expo in Barcelona?
All information UA Record gleans from the various apps and devices is collected in a single dashboard, a la Apple’s Health app, enabling users to track trends over time. There’s also a social element too with users about to share videos, photos and workout stories to a personalised feed.
It’s also possible to follow other users activity with members able to invite 20 friends from within their network to compete in customised health and fitness challenges and move towards goals together.
These challenges can centre around workout counts, total distance, total steps, calories burned and can be set up for daily, weekly and monthly competitions with real time updates, a leaderboard and a conversation forum. The idea is to connect users with a like-minded digital community in order to boost the motivation.
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The launch of UA Record, plus any hardware that’s sure to follow, sees Under Armour take on the likes of Nike, which has combined hardware and software with its Fuelband and Nike+ platforms.
Can Under Armour succeed where Nike has struggled? You can download the app for iOS and Android now, so let us know your thoughts below.
