If you follow me on any social network1 you might have seen that I participated in the Pebble Time Kickstarter campaign. Maybe you also saw that I recently received this wonderful gadget:
First impression when I put it around my wrist was how thin and light it is. Just like a regular watch or probably even thinner. Its strap is also of much higher quality than I imagined. I thought it’ll be of cheap-ish plastic and that I’ll sweat under it but I barely do - even when running. It’s awesome.
Using it has also been much easier than I imagined. Its UX is intuitive to the point where you don’t need any manual. Oh, there is none. But that’s OK. Left side has only one button - back. Right side has 3 buttons: up, down, confirm. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
When I was backing the project on Kickstarter I was most looking forward to Runkeeper integration. They were exposed as a major partner so I thought they’ll provide an awesome app. But they only provide a basic integration with Pebble Sports API. While running you can pause the run and see the duration, distance, and average pace of your run. There’s a support ticket for customization with 101 upvotes2 but without any response from Runkeeper.
So I looked at my favorite alternative when Runkeeper doesn’t work properly - Strava. They don’t even have support for Pebble on iOS. Because reasons. Again there is a support ticket with 77 likes2 and again without any official response.
Reading those support requests and comments I stumbled upon a running app of which I haven’t heard before - iSmoothRun. It doesn’t have a subscription model or a social network build around it and it’s a paid app upfront. But what it has is an awesome Pebble app. And features. Tons of features3. Just to name a few:
- customizable Pebble display - choose from myriad of possible data points and display them on pages of 3
- automatic metronome - only active when your cadence drops below a threshold
- support of all the possible heart rate sensors4
- automatic weather conditions logging
- master switch for all audio cues5
- custom interval training with heart rate coaching
- ghost runs
- amazing and detailed graphs and statistics after the run
- export to all the other services6 - it’ll even share your run live to Runkeeper
I could go on for days. It’s so amazing. And you can tell why by their tagline:
Programmed by runners, iSmoothRun is the app that we all wished for.
It’s as if all the other running apps were created by aliens imagining how people run and why/how would they use their apps. This one is the only one that just works. And makes perfect sense. Kudos, developers. And keep up the good work!
