Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Wishlist to Mr. Sports Tracker

Dear Mr. Sports Tracker, I’ve used your application many years already; this is what I’d like to get for next Xmas.

Fix the constant application crash. Checked statistics for my latest 10 exercises and only one of the recordings has finished successfully. For the other 9 recording Sports Tracker has restarted the phone and thus stopped recording; I have a couple of times observed how phone suddenly restarts when Sports Tracker is running. It was quite easy to reproduce before I disabled the automatic phone lock after 30 minutes. When locking after 30 minutes was enabled, Sports Tracker sessions used to stop exactly at 30:02 or 1:00:04.

Add a “power guard” feature. Sports Tracker is very battery hungry application and even though I unplug my phone from charger just before I start Sports Tracker, battery will drain before I return home. I’d like to enable setting that closes Sports Tracker before battery has dried completely - that is also a security feature that would keep my phone usable if something nasty happens while I’m out.

Add reminders. For long and concentrated training sessions I’d like to get reminders that alert according to my wishes. For example on a hot summer day I’d like to get a small alert every 15 minutes that reminds me it is time to get some drink and an hourly alert that reminds to get some carbohydrate.

Allow preplanned routes. Allow users to plan their routes (with Sports Tracker website, Google Maps, whatever) and upload the route to application. During exercise Sports Tracker application can give to user simple routing instructions or warn if he is no longer following the route.

Add weather information. For every outdoor exercise I’d like to get automatically current weather information stored.

Get training accessories to your online store. First thing I’d like to buy is a reliable bike mount that would allow me to use my heart rate belt with Sports Tracker application. Using HR belt while cycling doesn’t work if phone is in jersey’s rear pocket; I guess bluetooth signal is just too weak to go through my body.

Final wish: get the new website running.

Just in case you didn’t notice: I didn’t write these features should be free. I’d happily pay a small monthly fee for the new SportsTracker application.

FYI: I use Sports Tracker (version 3.05) with N96 (firmware 30.033).

//Harri

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow, in your case, with your errors I would have switched to ape@map, trekbuddy or one of those online-sport tools a long time ago ;)

Harri Salminen said...

Yes, I'm still getting ST failure rate > 90% and now decided to give a try to Endomondo. Let's see if that is more reliable.

//Harri