More insights into your health are going to be viewable thanks to updates to the Microsoft Health’s app and online dashboard. In addition to greater insights, the Microsoft Band will also work with MapMyRide and Strava.
The updates begin rolling out tomorrow and will all be available in the near future. The Microsoft Band already works with many popular fitness applications and ecosystem continues to grow. The coming addition of MapMyRide and Strava allows users to connect with their friends more. Both apps allow users to track exercise routes and share data with your friends. Working out alone can be difficult and the ability to share where you’ve gone and how well you did can create a healthy support group and competition.
On the dashboard side of things, the focus is on insights and displaying more data. The dashboard now shows you comparative insights so you can see how you are doing compared to people at a fitness level near yours. It also shows sleep recovery measurements, a history of your fitness tracking, and a VO2 maximum calculation. VO2 max measuring through the Microsoft Band uses your heart rate to calculate how well your cardiovascular health is improving.
If you don’t have a Microsoft Band, you don’t need to feel left out. A long list of Lumia handsets have Sensorcore which allows your phone to track your steps. A coming update will allow you to track your steps through Microsoft Health with one of those phones. That feature is already available on Fitbit’s app for Windows Phone and it’s great to see it come to the Microsoft Band.
The Microsoft Band is gaining more and more attention from Microsoft. Yesterday we reported that the Microsoft Health app has a new logo and looks like it will gain support for the Xbox One, Windows 8, and the iPad soon.
