Pedometer Reviews

Nokia 5500 Sport Cell Phone with Pedometer

Nokia has announced the 5500 Sport, a cell phone with a built-in pedometer. Sales in the US are expected from around September 2006.

According to the official company announcement:

A single button serves to activate three dedicated "modes" - a phone mode to stay in touch, the music mode to unwind or power-up, and the sports mode to help you break a sweat. The Nokia 5500 Sport also offers "text-to-speech" technology. Don't take your eyes off the track or that magazine, just tap the Nokia 5500 Sport and the message is read out to you. In sports mode, the Nokia 5500 Sport reads the status of your workout, allowing you to stay focused on the task, or the exercise, at hand.

When music is on your mind, the Nokia 5500 Sport gives you a jump start. Supporting a multitude of different digital music formats and memory cards of up to 1GB (microSD), the Nokia 5500 Sport can hold approximately 750 songs. With your music collection in hand, every activity has its own soundtrack!

Switched into sports mode, the Nokia 5500 Sport helps you keep track of work or your work-out. The integrated pedometer feature serves to monitor distance walked or calories burnt -during a busy day in the city or that breathtaking cardio session. For extra durability, the Nokia 5500 Sport features an ergonomic stainless steel casing, complemented by a splash and dust resistant shell and rubber grips. The sleek Nokia 5500 Sport is engineered with materials used in the latest high performance running shoes which make it look good on and off the court.

The Mobile Review website has published a most extensive report:

Nokia 5500 Sport is starting point for whole new line-up, it is interesting too. Integration level for sport mode, phone’s design and ergonomics level are amazing, they deserve separate praise. It’s been a while since we had a masterpiece at our hands, well-thought interface and particular functions, their integration, the whole thing is amazing. This phone is very neat looking and after two weeks you feel sympathy towards it.

As a bonus for those who already acquired Nokia 3250, we should tell you that Nokia 5500 has identical music part, although it is not positioned as music solution. Same number of settings and other minor things, as well as sound quality. I will highlight the fact that since Nokia 5500 is not a music solution, its capabilities are great, and this gives additional advantage.

In the end we have a perfect niche solution (this is not a mass-market, just like any other phone with protective case), it does not have direct competitors, and there’s little chance that any will appear in nearest future. This model is extremely successful and deserves special attention. This is one of the best smartphones in Nokia’s and S60 history. In case the company will be able to provide same level of integration for other niche products, we will see a rise of those, and a horde of clones too, attempts to replicate Nokia’s success. The way in which company is moving becomes clear now, these are first successful products for S60. There’s only one disadvantage for this product – battery life.

Gizmodo wrote:

I recall hearing once that customers perceive things that are yellow or red as being “sturdier” and “better made.” We’re not sure about the 5500, Nokia’s sporty model with rubber cladding, but it sure looks like it could withstand 4Gs and a brushfire.

Interestingly enough, the 5500 actually has a sport mode which includes a training diary and stopwatch. There is a switch on the side which locks the phone into one of three settings, sport, music, and standard. Finally, it has a text-to-speech feature for reading out SMS messages on the run. It’s also tri-band and should be in stores this summer for 300 euro. No pricing or US availability, but it looks promising.

All About Symbian said:

The sports mode of the 5500 is made up of three interconnected applications (Quick start, Diary and Tests) under the training folder. These applications use the built-in 3D sensor to measure the number of steps or strides you take and thereby record information about your training sessions. After entering some initial customisation information about your body (height, weight, gender) you can use Quick start to record walking and running training sessions.

The main view shows speed, distance travelled and time elapsed, while the pedometer view shows intensity, speed, distance travelled and number of steps. This functionality works surprisingly well, the 3D sensor detects each ground impact (you can fake this by shaking the phone up and down). At the end of each training session you can stop recording and view your overall statistics as well as information about the energy used and calories burnt. Although I was not able to test this, the application includes support for timed voice feedback on the progress of a training run. The phone will tell you how you are doing and how fast you are going (and even encourage you to keep going).

...While pedometers are not as accurate as GPS, they should be sufficient for most people. If you do want more accurate data then the applications have support for using data from a Bluetooth GPS. The Diary application allows you to access summary information from previous training sessions. The Tests application includes two basic tests to check your level of fitness, the Cooper Test and the Bike Test. The training applications that make up the sports mode of the phone are genuinely innovative and overall are very impressive - they are a unique bit of software differentiation. Within the applications there is a lot of attention to detail such as the use of large fonts, making it easy to read information on the screen. While they may not satisfy the statistics-obsessed runner, the ability to quickly and easily store training session data will, I'm sure, appeal to many. The inclusion of an built-in GPS would have been nice but is not essential.

* Get the Latest Price on the Nokia 5500 Sport Phone.

June 29^th, 2006
Updated: November 7th, 2007
 

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