Daily App: Fjuul is a unique activity tracker for your iPhone
Fjuul is a US$2.99 (briefly on sale for $0.99) health-related app that tracks your full body activity. The app runs in the background, and uses the iPhone sensors and your location to get a handle on what you are doing and how much exercise you are getting. Once you enter your body characteristics and age, the app calculates calories burned and allows you to set goals while you adjust your level of activity.
"We've developed Fjuul using a scientific approach to activity tracking, with a focus on the intensity of someone's movements. With Fjuul, it doesn't matter whether you're training for a marathon or walking to or even moving in the shop – every move counts," said CEO and founder of Fjuul, Sascha Wischek. "We believe counting steps, duration or calories just isn't enough when it comes to measuring the impact activity is having on a person's health or levels of exercise. Fjuul understands each user and educates them about what their daily activity means, how it can be maintained or increased to have a positive effect on their overall health."
When setting up Fjull you can create a free account or use your Facebook login. Enter your height, weight and age, and you can set a goal that includes things like burning off a hamburger, pasta or ice cream. Unlike a lot of fitness trackers, this app has a special emphasis on leisure activity, not just running or hiking.
There is also a social component to the app, which allows you to compare your activities to friends and family who are also using the app.
I set the app up and took a stroll. It seemed to pretty accurately gauge my activity, and even counted my steps. That was with the iPhone in my shirt pocket. Fjull runs in the background and I did not notice any heavy hit on battery life.
Fjuul is not a substitute for expensive and cumbersome performance hardware, but it did seem to register my activity in a meaningful way. The data seemed constant from session to session, so it's going to be helpful as you use it more to achieve your goals. I would say the app should best be thought of as designed to measure casual activity.
The only negative is when I shut Fjull down through Apple's multi-tasking gestures the app complained about being shut down. That seemed a bit over the top.
A similar app worth looking at is the free Argus pedometer. While not an exact feature-for-feature match, it will track your motion throughout a day.
Fjuul is an interesting approach to activity tracking, and comes at a fair price. The app requires iOS 7 or greater and it's optimized for the iPhone 5.
