Taiwanese smartphone giant HTC has finally thrown its hat into the wearables ring. The company used the first day of Mobile World Congress to unveil the RE Grip, a sports band developed in partnership with leading brand, Under Armour.
The device is a modestly designed, GPS-enabled wearable which will track your workouts with the help of Under Armour’s UA Record system – which has recently been buoyed by the company’s acquisition of the incredibly popular My Fitness Pal and Edmondo apps.
UA Record allows users to keep tabs on their nutrition information, performance stats and, importantly, will let you share your latest achievements with all the layabouts on your social networks.
The Grip will play nice with iOS and Android device, provided they are iOS 7+ or Android 4.3+, and, with the help of its five on-board sensors will monitor every aspect of your session.
If you’re running, it will keep tabs on your route, distance, pace and the amount of calories you’ve burned, and it will also connect up to a whole host of external heart rate monitors, so you can keep track of your ticker’s performance too, however the lack of in-built HR monitoring might be a downer for some potential buyers.
The band is waterproof and packs a 500mAh battery which HTC tell us is good for about 5 hours on a single charge; it should be enough to cover at least two workouts for most of us. If you’re an elite-level athlete we presume you’ll just have to charge it more often. The device also features a 1.8-inch curved PMOLED screen which will keep you up to speed on all your info and will also allow you to remotely control your music while you’re on the hoof.
The HTC Grip is expected to launch at the start of spring, available in either lime green or deep teal. The company says that the rollout will intially be a US-exclusive, the homeland of Under Armour, but plans to bring it to Europe as well aren’t out of the question.
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