Walking apps and smart watches

In the pre-historic age, I used to use an app called MapMyWalk to measure how far I walked. Whilst this app is useful when I walk abroad, it's less useful at home. Apart from the fact that I know my route intimately, it only counts my steps in a given walk, not how many steps I've taken all day. For this, I use the pre-installed app Samsung Health.

A few years ago, there was an item on the early evening news about an app that would give its users money in return for walking (I worked out that it was 1 NIS per 1000 steps). Fairly quickly I stored up a large number of points and was able to redeem them whilst purchasing a pair of enclosed gaming headphones (I'm not a gamer, but I appreciate the closed headphones for listening to music). Shortly after, I realised that this app was not really giving me money: it was giving me discounts for products that I don't purchase. 

A few months ago, a random conversation on this topic brought up the fact that our health fund has its own app; this tracks not only steps but also self-reported meals, meals, sleep and a few other things. This app sets ridiculous standards: 11,600 steps/day (I actually manage this most days) and 17 cups of drink (this is 3.4 litres, whereas most sources say that one needs to drink 'only' 2 litres a day. The app does not recognise other types of activity, such as swimming, which is a shame because the swimming season started at around the same time that I started using this app.

Be that as it may, over about eight weeks I managed to accumulate over 26,000 points and was able to order a smart watch. Unlike the goods and/or services from the previous app, this watch is completely free. There are other items that I can obtain from the health fund, such as exercise mats and balls, that are less useful to me. The smart watch, an Xiaomi Smart Band 5, arrived at a pickup location in Bet Shemesh a week ago. The instruction manual is so small that it was very difficult to read (I found an online copy but it wasn't more enlightening). Thus it took some time before I realised that I was supposed to charge the watch - then I had to find the charging cable that I had thrown out with the packaging. There was quite a bit of confusion and frustration regarding opening a "Mi account" but I eventually I managed to get past this.

OK, watch charged. Now it wants to pair with my telephone via Bluetooth. This took several days to achieve, mainly because I was making a mistake in the app on the phone. I can't restore the same screen now, but there was a choice of band/watch/smart shoes and something else; I chose 'watch' but eventually I realised that the correct choice was 'band'. Now the band and my phone are paired! Then came a stage that lasted about 15 minutes during which firmware and other things were transferred from the phone to the band, before the band finally lit up and said that it was ready.

What can I say after 24 hours of wearing this band (I'm going to call it a watch from now on)? I haven't got a complete day's walking yet, but until this minute Samsung health says that I have taken 3,611 steps; the health fund app also says 3,611 (that surprised me slightly as I thought that there were small differences between the two) and the watch app says 3,262 steps - quite a difference (that's only 90% of the steps as reported by two other apps).

More interesting is apparently I slept 6 hours and 37 minutes last night. I fell asleep at 21:53 (I thought that I fell asleep a bit earlier, but that's close enough) and woke up at 5:31 (the alarm is set for 5:30). But apparently I was awake for just over an hour during the night; I can't see at the moment how to get a list of times that I was awake according to the watch. I know that I got up twice during the night, the first time for about ten minutes and the second time for a minute or two; the watch shows that the first time was quite a bit longer than I thought. There are also a few other periods that the watch shows that I was awake that I'm not aware of. This doesn't surprise me too much as after all I suffer from sleep apnea; it will be interesting to compare these results to those of the CPAP machine, although the latter doesn't seem to measure how long I've been asleep (or awake) but rather how long I've been wearing the mask.

It will be interesting to compare my pulse as per the blood pressure machine to what the watch claims it to be. There are a few other pieces of data that the watch provides - stress and something called PAI (I imagine that it's Personal Activity Intelligence); it will take some time for this to accrue.

One thing that I checked on the watch's website is whether the watch is water-proof: it is! This means that apart from not having to take it off when I shower, supposedly the watch is going to measure something when I swim. I'm not sure when I'll be swimming this week (it's the Jewish New Year on Tuesday and pool openings are irregular) but I'll make sure to check. The swimming should affect the PAI, at least.