Sunday, November 22, 2020

iPhone 12 Pro Max / Series 3 watch / Fitness tracking

 My wife likes me

I recently started working out, riding bicycles. I have been trying to find fitness tracking nirvana for cycling.

Wear has problems. My Misfit uses all its battery on a ride and hangs all the time when I am trying to see where I am at.

I tried a Fitbit Versa 2 (on sale at Costco). It's A-GPS (grab the GPS from the phone) never worked right. turns out I needed a Versa 3 to have a built-in GPS. The packaging said the Versa 2 had GPS... not so much. I should have researched that better. My bad. I was sin Costco. they had a sale. Lesson learned.

Now on the Fitbit, I have no tracking other than heart rate. Useless for my goal., Nice for sleep tracking though.

Strava? Also useless. It hides the heart data collected by the Misfit Vapor 2 Wear watch unless I pay for it. I do not care about the social aspects of Strava. I just want to track my progress. 

Mine. Not Billy Bobs. Strava is about social workouts. I am sure there are people that like that. I do not care. I am not competing with anyone about anything. I want to know how I am doing. Finis.

I added a Wahoo speed sensor to the bike, and the ANT+ radio connection to the S20 worked fine. The S20 uses about 30% of its battery on a ride, and I assume this is mostly from the screen being on for three hours. The Wahoo app cannot consume heart data from Wear or anything other than its own heart sensor, which is limiting. The Wahoo heart sensor is not a wrist appliance.

My looking around (after the Fitbit lesson) said Apple would work better for what I want. So my wife bought me an iPhone. I'm unemployed so I can't. She also bought a Series 6 watch and deeded me her old Series 3.

It works perfectly. It is exactly what I want.

Now, when I go busting around the park for 20-25 miles, I see all the data I want to see. Routes and average speeds, and elevation changes, and heart rate recovery intervals. Right out of the box. I still use the Wahoo (via Bluetooth, not ANT+) for the real-time speedo. It still eats battery on the iPhone because of screen time. Samsung has an Amoled screen. Wahoo has a White background, enemy of Amoled.  iPhone has Amoled. Same / Same.

So: Problem solved. Fitness tracking exactly what I want. But now, suddenly, unexpectedly, I am an iPhone user again. My last personal iPhone was a 3GS.

Brave new world.

No comments: