Google Fit is Google’s own fitness and activity platform that was built to work with Android Wear, so we have an app for Android Wear as well as your smartphone. For obvious reasons, it’s a bit behind the likes of Fitbit and Jawbone who have been doing fitness tracking for years now. But Google continues to make Google Fit better each and every day. With the latest update to Google Fit, which brings it to version 1.56, users are now able to start activities from their smartwatch. Let’s explain first.
Typically, with fitness tracking apps. When you are running, or biking, or lifting weights, you need to go into the app and tell it you are starting a run. So it can record your activity. Recently Fitbit has updated their Charge, Charge HR and Surge so that it can detect the activity automatically. Now Google Fit has updated, not so it can detect it automatically, but users are able to start the activity from the Google Fit app on their smartwatch. Making things much more convenient. While it would still be great for the app to detect activities automatically, this is still a step in the right direction.
Now when you go to start the activity in Google Fit, you can now also tell the app what activity you are doing. Whether that is running, biking, or whatever it might be. It replaces the “Start Challenge” page which used to be the fifth page. Google Fit will then grab the GPS from your phone, to map your run, walk, or bike path, as well as show you how long you’ve been going and how many steps you’ve taken. When you’re done you’ll be able to see a screen that says how long you did that activity for, how many calories you burned, as well as the distance covered.
This update is available now from the Google Play Store. It’s version 1.56, and everyone should be seeing it rolling out to their devices shortly. It is likely a staged roll out, as is usual with Google. Especially with an app that almost everyone has installed on their phone (helps keep the servers running smoothly).