Moves Fitness Tracking iOS App
I have been keeping my eye on the market for fitness trackers and fitness tracking apps for several years now. There are a wide range of options across all mobile platforms. Up to this point, I haven’t been willing to take the plunge and buy a band, so I focused mostly on apps that work without the need of another device. I downloaded many apps, but I always ended up deleting them within a week or two. Until a little over six months ago, when I downloaded the Moves app. I quickly fell in love with it, and it has been running on my phone for the last six months nearly non-stop. That is, until recently.
Purpose & Functionality
The purpose of this app is to track your movements throughout the day. Along with the typical steps, distance, time and calorie tracking, Moves makes a timeline of your day as well as a map view of all of your movements.
Rating: simplicity, usefulness, beauty, necessity, & stickiness
- Simplicity. (9/10) Moves has a remarkably simple interface for the amount of information it has to display. Check out this video from Jack Steedman to see how it works.
- Usefulness. (7/10) Moves is quite useful, but it does have two downsides that must be addressed. It is not quite as accurate as many apps that use separate tracking devices, and even on battery saving mode, it has a significant effect on your phone’s batter life.
- Beauty. (9/10) As you’ve seen in the screenshots and video above, Moves is a beautifully simplistic app. I haven’t found a more attractive fitness tracking app on the market.
- Necessity. (8/10) Fitness tracking apps aren’t necessary, but they are extremely useful. I’d suggest that if you have a smart phone, you might as well have a fitness tracking up like Moves.
- Stickiness. (9/10) I’m somewhat of an app snob. I don’t keep many apps on my phone for more than a week or two unless I love them, and Moves has spent the last six months on my home screen. I’d say it has had incredible stickiness.
Report (IMPORTANT)
Moves has recently been purchased by Facebook. In the original announcement, Moves stated, “Moves will continue to operate as a standalone app, and there are no plans to change that or commingle data with Facebook.” This was encouraging because I don’t want Facebook having access to all of my movements for the past six months, but I am sad to report that moves has recently updated their privacy policy. In their update they reserve the right to share any and all personal information with “affiliates (companies that are part of our corporate groups of companies, including but not limited to Facebook).” For me this was a deal breaker. After spending a few minutes making sure that I wasn’t misunderstanding what I read, I promptly deleted all of my Moves data, my account, and the app from my phone. Although moves is an incredibly beautiful and functional app, I cannot recommend it to anyone because of the extremely irresponsible data policy.
Alternatives
Since I have deleted Moves, I've gone ahead and purchased an Up24 from Jawbone. Keep an eye out for a review.
Moves is available in the Apple App Store &the Google Play Store.
Header image from wikipedia.
All quotes and the second image from Moves-App.com.