Sujet : Re: Steps counting apps
De : anssi.saari (at) *nospam* usenet.mail.kapsi.fi (Anssi Saari)
Groupes : comp.mobile.androidDate : 20. May 2024, 17:25:48
Autres entêtes
Organisation : An impatient and LOUD arachnid
Message-ID : <sm0zfsk5wub.fsf@lakka.kapsi.fi>
References : 1
User-Agent : Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/27.1 (gnu/linux)
Jim the Geordie <
jim@jimXscott.co.uk> writes:
Just out of curiosity I thought I might try a STEPS counter app.
Many seem to come with all sorts of health monitoring extras, which I'm
not bothered about, but happy to enter and not use.
However there are massive differences between them on the numbers of
steps they claim I have taken and some don't appear to work at all.
I'm not wanting to start a thread about the health benefits, just to
find the simplest, accurate, free one.
As I recall, step counter functionality was added to Android as a system
function in version 4.2 or thereabouts, over a decade ago. This relies
on a dedicated hardware sensor which just counts steps, quietly and
without a fuss. So all a step counter app needs to do is query that step
counter often enough since the system just counts steps from boot so
it's up to the app to figure out which steps were taken on a particular
day.
Looks like there is now both a step detector and step counter, with the
latter being the more accurate.
A phone without these hardware sensors would have to try to constantly
analyze whatever the phone accelerometer puts out or maybe try something
like "distance travelled by guessed stride length" which are likely to
get the steps wrong.
After some searching I found "Privacy Friendly Pedometer" by SECUSO
researd group in the Play store
(
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secuso.privacyfriendlyactivitytracker). I
tested it very briefly this afternoon, seemed to match closely to what
my Garmin Fenix 6 smartwatch counted. And it tells you if your phone has
the needed hardware sensors or not.