Health app and Firmware update

[Nate Silver]

Any news yet on changes with the new app update and firmware?? Mine's updating now. I looked, but didn't see an updated change log in the store.

 

[Nate Silver]

Only thing in the Band's 'whats new' tile is a new GPS Power Saver mode, to increase battery life up to 4 hours when activated. I wonder how that works.........probably uses a lower sampling rate, probably trades-off some fine accuracy for better battery life.

Also something about weight tracking. Looks like it just displays an over-time graph of what you enter. Aack, I always add a few pounds in the winter! Now I'll get nagged about that.

I hope they did something to improve the HR monitor algorithm, its been my only real beef with Band 2!

 

[indiW]

Possibly a step in the right direction.

There is a talk about been able to share individuals work outs with friends. I didn't try this yet.

Posted via the Windows Central App for Android

 

[Eddie Mendoza]

mine hasnt asked me to update, how do i manually search for updates on my band or phone ? thanks guys !

 

[devbent]

Only thing in the Band's 'whats new' tile is a new GPS Power Saver mode, to increase battery life up to 4 hours when activated. I wonder how that works.........probably uses a lower sampling rate, probably trades-off some fine accuracy for better battery life.

Hi Nate SIlver,

That is exactly how it works! It is a trade off users can choose to make. For some types of bike trips and runs it makes almost no difference, but it is not that suited for running lots of curvy trails in a park.

Play around with it and see how you like it, some users are going to love getting a longer battery life, while other users are going to really want that precision.

 

[Dave47]

Thanks for stoppin' by here devbent. Nice to see updates. And BTW, any update on the other battery problem. The one where the band "thinks" the battery is dead but really isn't. TIA

 

[James8561]

Any improvement to HR monitor? I notice that heart rate changes always lag behind actual heart rate in the run app compared to the exercise app

 

[camaroz1985]

Does the iphone app push updates to the band as well?

 

[DroidUser42]

*Sigh* no firmware updates for B1.

 

[DeNachtwacht]

Hi Nate SIlver,

That is exactly how it works! It is a trade off users can choose to make. For some types of bike trips and runs it makes almost no difference, but it is not that suited for running lots of curvy trails in a park.

Play around with it and see how you like it, some users are going to love getting a longer battery life, while other users are going to really want that precision.

Question would this update make the band 2 more capable of recording a hike? I can imagine that with this new power saving mode instead of around 4 hours you'll get 8 hours of gps tracking and that suddenly makes the band capable of tracking day trips... true or too good to be true?

 

[cleverclogs]

My firmware update keeps failing :S. It gets to stage 7, says "all done" but then throws up an error saying 'something went wrong' and wants to run the update all over again, and I can't do anything to avoid that. FFS

 

[indiW]

Anybody figure out how to share activities,

I am using Samsung galaxy note 4 (android) I logged on to MS health dashboard but can't see anything new there.

Thanks.

Posted via the Windows Central App for Android

 

[BlackSheriff84]

Anybody know if the new weight tracking feature supports any smart scales?

 

[gwinegarden]

Hi Nate SIlver,

That is exactly how it works! It is a trade off users can choose to make. For some types of bike trips and runs it makes almost no difference, but it is not that suited for running lots of curvy trails in a park.

Play around with it and see how you like it, some users are going to love getting a longer battery life, while other users are going to really want that precision.

This makes a whole lot of sense.

 

[devbent]

Question would this update make the band 2 more capable of recording a hike? I can imagine that with this new power saving mode instead of around 4 hours you'll get 8 hours of gps tracking and that suddenly makes the band capable of tracking day trips... true or too good to be true?

Hi DeNachtwacht,

Hiking should indeed work. If a trail has a lot of switchbacks then we might not perform so well on it, periodic sampling loses finer details.

 

[toddsay]

I saw the expected behavior on the GPS power saving mode, which was a bit less accuracy due to lower sampling. It was a 3-mile run which was not entirely straight but not particularly twisty either. Mostly straight. It reported low by about 10%, essentially "rounding errors". It would be interesting if the band could add a percentage to try to guess more accurately (but that would likely require some analysis on the sampled data, trying to determine how straight the path is).

I wonder if it would make sense to have a separate "rotate on" mode for exercising (perhaps with a longer timeout so we have time to view the stats before it turns off). Seems like that could save a lot of battery life on long workouts.

I love the band but right now the overall battery life is killing me. I can't seem to get through a full day before it starts warning of low battery and eventually shutting off (that's with rotate mode, and typically about 30 minutes of exercise time per day).

 

[driedl]

I had my first full day with the update yesterday. HR monitoring has not improved. Exactly 5 minutes in to my elliptical warm up, it shows my peak HR at 182. Someone call an ambulance! That's at least 40 BPM high. After that, it settled in to more realistic numbers, but still showed less accurate results than my B1 used to.
I did notice that my step count was about 30% higher than I would have expected. I somehow ended up over 10,000 steps with a normal day in the office and no run. Time (or maybe devbent) will tell if that's an anomaly.

 

[shinsenai]

I've updated this morning (Band 2 and Lumia 950 XL). Update went fine, but now syncing between the Band and the Health app always gets stuck at about 80%. Values are retrieved from the band and I can see them in the web Dashboard, but the Health app doesn't get refreshed. Also, it keeps draining battery (47% of the total battery usage according to the battery monitor). I've rebooted both phone and band and uninstalled/reinstalled the Health app, but the problem is still there. Any suggestion?

 

[driedl]

I love the band but right now the overall battery life is killing me. I can't seem to get through a full day before it starts warning of low battery and eventually shutting off (that's with rotate mode, and typically about 30 minutes of exercise time per day).

That's not normal, toddsay. You should try resetting your band. If that doesn't fix it, get it replaced.

 

[Wiggles8012]

I've updated this morning (Band 2 and Lumia 950 XL). Update went fine, but now syncing between the Band and the Health app always gets stuck at about 80%. Values are retrieved from the band and I can see them in the web Dashboard, but the Health app doesn't get refreshed. Also, it keeps draining battery (47% of the total battery usage according to the battery monitor). I've rebooted both phone and band and uninstalled/reinstalled the Health app, but the problem is still there. Any suggestion?

I am having the same issue (Band 2 and 950 XL). Is your phone on the latest preview build (10.0.10586.71)?

On Monday I updated my phone to .71 and that fixed a lot of issues with the band, including the keyboard text reply started working and cortana voice prompts started working. Then on Tuesday I updated the Health app and Band 2 firmware and now I am getting the sync issue and the keyboard/cortana are no longer working again.

My guess is going to be that they didn't test this new firmware against the Windows 10 preview build.