Potentials evaluation for instant usability of smartphone apps in health and sports endurance activity tracking

Abstract

Systematic control of physical workouts is required for achieving good curing or caring effects in health activities as well as for sustaining or even improving fitness level in non-elite and professional sports. For this purpose, respectivelywearable medical monitors as also a wide range of personal sports computers were commonly in use since longer time. With the overwhelming evolvement of the smartphone market, health and sports monitoring was identified also as prospective working field for app developers. Accordingly, numerous smartphone apps are offered meanwhile for endurance training, many of them even as so-called freeware. An investigation is presented here about the required efforts in setup and in daily use as also about the reliability of such smartphone monitoring, taking especially into account the needs of possible elderly users. Furthermore, it is critically discussed in this work, whether smartphone apps really can replace the instant and seamless use mode of traditional sports computers.