day 60, came back from a 20k run last week and the evenings are becoming chilly (5°C) at 61degrees north (helsinki). wanted to hit the stop button for the sports track timer, but it’s not as a direct option, so you have to go through the menu. it gets really tricky to operate the nokia n85 with stiff fingers via the soft keys. it would be better if “stop” is dedicated to one of the three soft keys (left, middle or right). or even better, there really should be another input paradigm used, just tapping the device or voice input as outlined in part I.
well indoors - and gradually warming up - comes the neat part of the sports tracker app, uploading the run to the service. this procedure fits well in-between closing the door behind you and reaching the shower. you select the workout from the calendar in the application, open the summary and select upload from the options menu. what follows is a number of pop-up dialogues that are annoying:
- share with others? -> no / yes, with friends / yes with everybody
- Search for associated media items? -> yes / no
- Upload media to service? -> yes / no
those could be covered in the settings of the app or with a “do you want to use this as a default option” when uploading the first time or as service side things to adjust via the PC web interface. what the user wants is a one click mechanism and it’s all uploaded to the server. you shower, settle in front of the pc afterwards with a steaming cup of tea, check the just run route, distance, go through the taken pictures or videos and brag to your friends about it by spamming their inboxes with a link to the achievement.
one more aspect that came up while running the intervals last week. the lap time is not displayed during the run. checking intermediate times during each effort, for a 1000m run at e.g. 200, 400, 600 and 800m, is impossible.
don’t have any screen shots handy here. if anyone finds a an application that can take screenshots of the most recent S60 devices, those without an edit key, please let me know. the ones I found, screenshot for Symbian 3.0 and ScreenSnap need the edit key to capture the screen, that key is missing on the nokia n85 and nokia e71.
a sports tracker review part III will follow next week and will look at the web service. stay tuned…
