Boston-born fitness app RunKeeper revealed on Wednesday a brand new app by the name of Breeze, which aims to help you get into healthy fitness routines by seamlessly integrating into the fabric of your life. The roll out of the app is also bound to leave step-tracking wearable makers like FitBit shaking in their sneakers.
Breeze runs almost invisibly on your phone throughout the day, gathering data on your physical activity, including when you wake up and start moving, the number of steps you take throughout the day and when you’re at rest, all without draining your smartphone's battery. If RunKeeper is the fitness-forward person’s companion for charting cardio workouts, Breeze is his or her coach to getting back on the healthy living track, and boost awareness of activity habits throughout the rest of the day.
If you follow the startup’s CEO and founder Jason Jacobs on Twitter, you probably have been seeing the mysterious hashtag ‘#projecteve’ floating around. That’s been the codename for the new tech. According to Jacobs, the RunKeeper team started building the blueprints of Breeze last summer.
“When we heard rumblings that Apple was going to be adding a M7 processor, we said we’re going to make a bet on it,” explained Jacobs to BostInno. As it turns out, said bet paid off. Apple introduced the M7 processor into the iPhone 5S in late 2013; RunKeeper's successful gamble will help hold the startup’s spot as a frontrunner in the fitness app genre, and threaten the existence of fitness wearables like FitBit.
The M7 processor gathers data around your phone’s movements and location throughout the day, enabling developers like those at RunKeeper to harness that data and build a valuable user experience on top of it. Because the tech to track every step you take is built into the phone, the need for an additional wearable – FitBit, Nike + Move – is eliminated.
The M7 processor also gives Breeze the power to size up your activity data from the past week at launch. Comparing your data with that of other users, the app can then recommend personal goals to reach for to up your fitness from the start. When those goals are met or missed, Breeze sends out notifications giving you a virtual pat on the back or an extra push of encouragement. The app also sends out messages based on the data around when you typically start or stop moving during the day.
Breeze will integrate with RunKeeper post-launch, allowing users to have one place to go for all of their health tracking, and one account from which to manage it.
Added Jacobs, “Between RunKeeper and Breeze, people can have a framework for their fitness throughout the day to follow, it’s a killer combination.”
