Saturday, January 14, 2017

An Advantage of "Pedometer" as my Smartphone Step Counter

Soon after I got my new Samsung J7 smartphone, I began looking to install a better pedometer than I had been using. I'm sure I'm not the only person who sometimes paces at home to reach a "step goal," and since part of the "system" that many of the pedometers use are attuned to distances, they get "confused" when we pace.

With the "app" I had been using, walklogger, I'd find it losing steps when I paced. I'd have to keep stopping to try to trick it. That was a big problem when the weather was bad and I'd want to reach a specific goal at home. It really hated a friend's apartment. It would outright refuse to count the steps I walked there. It also took ages/many steps to start counting, even when I adjusted the sensitivity. I could spend hours walking around the Israel Museum and I'd be lucky if it credited me for 150 steps. Once I was with a friend who had an iphone, and we discovered that although I'd been walking a lot that day, and she had hardly walked at all, our phone apps gave us the same count. Then we walked around together for about twenty minutes. My app added about 300 steps and hers added over a thousand!


Now I use one that simply calls itself "Pedometer," and it counts steps, even if I'm pacing or walking up and down stairs. It doesn't beep me when I've achieved any goals, but I can survive without a pat on the back. It's easy to check my progress over the day, and it doesn't claim I'm riding a bicycle when I walk downhill quickly, which a different app did. And like the others I've tried, it's free, of course.

I hope this helps.

I just wish it could keep me from eating too much...

No comments: