HTC Grip – the fitness tracker for real keep fitters

HTC are entering the wearables market this year with the HTC Grip, a wristband aimed at people that actually do that fitness thing.

As well has the star of the HTC show in Barcelona, the HTC One M9, the company also took the wrappers off of its first wearable. The Grip fitness tracker.

Where most ‘fitness trackers’ seem to be aimed at people such as myself – those that should be exercising – the HTC Grip is like… a real athletic tool.

For a start, the HTC Grip has GPS, something missing from just about every other small-size bit of fitness tracking tech. This means that your wrist-wear can accurately track your runs rather than just guesstimating the distance by working out the number of strides you’ve taken. When you’re serious about your personal bests, it’s important to have accurate data, right?

Even though HTC has squeezed GPS in to the Grip, they have managed to keep it surprisingly skinny and avoided the chunky fitness watch looks. Seeing it, you’d think it was the usual slim fitness tracker band.

— go to: Hands on with the HTC One M9 —

The HTC Grip will last for around two days without using GPS – this is likely to plummet, however, when you fire up the proper GPS. Expect around five hours with active tracking of your runs or cycle rides with GPS on. Still, how many of you mentalists spend over 5 hours constantly being healthy? Weirdos! 😛

The Grip even features a spanky 1.8-inch PMOLED display that curves around the band, fitting your wrist making it nice and easy to impress yourself.

HTC has teamed-up with fitness brand Under Armour and uses their Record tracking software, which should give it pretty good tracking chops, and it’ll work with Android and iOS devices (iOS 7, Android 4.3 and above).

You can even set up team challenges with as many as 20 people if you feel the need to.

Professional trainers will agree that sleep is crucial to the success of any serious training program and Grip’s auto sleep detection records the total amount of time spent asleep.

Periods of deep and light sleep are also recorded with a view to helping you develop sleep patterns that will help athletes unlock peak fitness and performance.

Feel free to get sweaty and/or wet as the HTC Grip is rated at IP57 which means that it can handle being immersed in up to 1m of water for up to 30 minutes.

I think that HTC has played it safe with the Grip. Yes, it looks good and pack GPS and the rest of the fitness must-haves. HTC have also teamed up with a proper fitness brand too. It looks serious on paper and the Grip looks well built and will no doubt do the job. It’s just not taking any risks. That makes sense to business and to the bottom line, but will the addition of GPS to a well designed fitness band be enough?

The HTC Grip will be available in Deep Teal/Lime at select retailers in North America, beginning in Spring 2015.