Google counters HealthKit with Google Fit
In conjunction with Android 5.0 Lollipop, Google announced a new fitness tracking platform called Google Fit at this year’s Google I/O developer conference. Just like on iOS, fitness and activity tracking apps on Android have been fragmented and independent, unable to easily share data with third parties or with connected fitness wearables. Apple tackled the problem with HealthKit in iOS 8, which served as a platform for any third-party apps and services to tap into and openly communicate. Today, Google launched a new Android app called Google Fit, which aims to do very much the same thing across Android devices. What appears at first glance to be a basic step counter is actually much more significant for the future of Android as a platform: Google Fit sets a precedent for all versions of Android to truly become the centralized hub for everything in users’ digital lives.
Google Fit automatically tracks walking, running, and cycling activity just by virtue of installation on an Android device, using smartphones’ intelligent accelerometers to serve as a virtual pedometer and parse out different levels of physical activity. The app displays chronological data in a Material Design–influenced interface of pie charts and line graphs. Users can set goals for their physical activity and measure their progress over time, giving Android users a new level of control and self-determination over their overall health and physical fitness. This functionality matches forthcoming features in iOS and Apple Watch’s Fitness application, which synchronizes activity data and measures success against daily metric goals.
Significantly, Google Fit is fully compatible with Android Wear devices out of the box. Whereas HealthKit on iOS is dependent on connected apps and devices to provide wearable-assisted fitness data ahead of next year’s anticipated Apple Watch launch, any smart wearable among Google’s expanding lineup of Wear products can feed into Google Fit and begin informing user goals. In one fell swoop, the Android fitness platform is compatible with more first-party wearable devices than iOS, and both are compatible with the ever-expanding ecosystem of connected wearable pedometers and fitness trackers from accessory manufacturers like Fitbit. This level of platform cohesion bests iOS in the early days of the fight between connected fitness platforms, and positions Android Wear to be a major feature competitor against the health-focused Apple Watch lineup in 2015.
In addition, because Google Fit comes unbundled from the new version of the Android operating system, the app and its connective services will run on any Android device since 4.0. This opens the system to years-old devices, whose users still connect fitness wearable devices to track their steps and meet goals. This backwards compatibility differs from iOS 8’s Health app, which only logs on-device step counting from iPhones with the M7 or M8 motion coprocessor and only provides HealthKit services to third parties from devices running the latest software version. Google’s approach with Android services via the Google Play Store includes the widest range of the platform’s disparate devices and capabilities, and opens Google Fit to a much larger audience than Lollipop exclusivity would.
Between Google Fit and HealthKit, users on both platforms are empowered to track their own fitness and daily activity without the need to purchase third-party accessories or download special apps. (And, for those who like third-party accessories and apps, both platforms provide connective services that allow those products to better log data and communicate with one another.) The world’s two largest mobile operating systems have reached near–feature parity in the realm of health and fitness monitoring services. The first step is downloading Google Fit—the next 10,000 steps are up to you.