Sony Readies SmartBand Fitness Tracker for a March Start

The days are getting longer throughout the Northern Hemisphere and as such, many are looking to get back outside again. Running, biking, walking, hiking; whatever the “-ing” of the moment, it's being anticipated. To that end, Sony is looking to get in on the itchy feet of housebound, coldbound Northern Hemisphere residents with its upcoming release of the Sony SmartBand, a fitness tracker that offers more than the ordinary.

The SmartBand made its first appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES (News - Alert)) event back in January, and is currently appearing at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona ahead of a worldwide release in March.  The SmartBand is set to launch with an accompanying app, Lifelog—which will also make its appearance in March—and the combination of these two systems will help bring a new level of capability to fitness trackers. Not only will the Lifelog / SmartBand combination work to track simple things like how much walking the user did in a day, but it will also help track the places that were visited as a result of all that walking, as well as games that were played, books that were read, music that was listened to, and things like that that aren't necessarily related to exercise, but are related to the overall life of which exercise is an important part. The results of said tracking are then compiled in what's known as the SmartWear Experience.

But it's not just a lifelogging tool, either. Sony's SmartBand can also be used to track sleep cycles for an ideal wake-up call—it's actually possible to sleep too much as too little, according to some reports—and the system can also notify a user about incoming calls, text, and various social media activity like Facebook (News - Alert) and Twitter activity. This is done with the help of the Core system, which is in place on the SmartBand's wristband, and offers up a USB connection that still allows for complete waterproofing and an overall light weight that allows the device to easily follow the user around.  Reports also note that the SmartBand can pair with Android (News - Alert) headphones—a positive development as the SmartBand itself has no screen with which to make all these notifications plain—and can connect via Bluetooth connection or by near-field communications (NFC).

It's at once an unusual development and a confirmation of several developments before this to see Sony bringing out the SmartBand. On the one hand, it's further confirmation that the fitness tracker market is one that's brimming with competitors. To call this a saturated market is not out of line in the least. Yet by like token, as we've seen recently with the Flyfit fitness tracker on Kickstarter, there's room enough for fitness trackers that do more than track fitness. Tracking sleep cycles is a great addition, but the more that a company can add, the better off it is. Flyfit, for example, brought in a new way to track motion by connection to the legs. Sony's SmartBand looks to add much more than just fitness tracking and more of a complete lifestyle tracking system.

We'll likely find out sooner rather than later how this does overall, with only a few weeks until its release. But this may well do better than some might expect, and represent a new, disruptive presence in the fitness tracker market.