Mi Band

Tiny Useful Gadget or Just a Shiny Toy?

Fitness trackers have been around a while now; may not be so in the Indian market but the market in general. Whenever you hear the word fitness tracker you instantly have a few phrases in your mind. Yes, right, they are how much I run or how much I walk etc. This nifty little band does that and more. Some might say it misses a few punches and I would say ‘Yes, even the best of us do’.
Now enough of catchy phrases, let’s get down to the Has and Has Not.

Under the shiny surface:
Battery type: lithium-polymer battery
Synchronization: Bluetooth 4.0
Water resistance level: ІР67 i.e. protection against dust and water immersion up to 1m and for up to 30 minutes. (Yeah, it can hear you sing in the shower without bothering you)
The total weight: 5.0g
Battery capacity: 41mAh
Operating temperature range: -10С – 50С

Surface
Length of the bracelet: 225mm
Material of the fastener: aluminium alloy
Adjustable length: 157mm-205mm
Strap: polyurethane (You can get a band matching with your dress colour)

Now that we have the specifications out of the way, let me start sharing my experience with you. The moment I decided to buy the band I did an online research for the compatibility of device with my phone. And to my relief it was compatible with my relatively old Moto G 1st Gen and for that matter it is compatible with devices with Android 4.4 and higher. It even supports the iPhone now. After that was out of the way I decided to search on the app. Lo and behold the first chink in the armour. The app was rated a lowly 3.x with a good number of votes and I thought to myself “Did I make a mistake?” Reviews pointed out there were a lot of issues. I got a little more worried. Then I thought there must be someone out there who has solved a few problems and added a few functionalities as well. With that, I went to XDA and searched for a solution which I duly found. While I was searching, I had the idea that having custom colour notifications would be cool, just like my old phone Moto Defy. And as you can imagine I found the custom Mi Fit app on XDA. Roll on.
The band arrives in a few days’ time as promised by Xiaomi. The packaging is extremely nice in a wood coloured box. The contents include the wrist band, tracker, and a charge cable along with all the necessary manuals. The tracker goes in the band which fits nicely onto the groove of the tracker and doesn’t feel out of place. Installation is fairly simple you just wear it on any of the wrists and fire up the app (whichever you chose the official or the unofficial). The app will guide you through the process with help of pictures. I did face a few problems, tapping on the tracker’s surface to pair is not easy or one time job. I had to do it a few times to get it paired. After pairing you can set your preferences, i.e. targets, which hand you are wearing the band on, notifications, etc. The custom app lets you choose a colour for specific app along with the times you want the band to vibrate. I find this functionality very essential since it does not have a screen. Another great little feature in this is the alarm clock. The chances of a person waking up are much better when something is vibrating on him rather than beside him. And moreover, it senses that you are ready to wake up and nudges you half an hour early so that you get up on your intended time. Oh! I forgot to tell you about the sleep cycle tracker. The sleep dial (which is accessible via left to right swipe on the main screen) shows you the total sleep hours and of it how many were in deep sleep mode. Deep and Normal sleep cycles are shown with the help of neat bar graph and I think they are fairly accurate. I can say that because I usually wake up at night for drinking water and I have a habit of looking at my phone then. And this activity is pointed out on the graph with the help of a brown coloured band. One thing I noticed was it doesn’t track your afternoon slumber if it’s no longer than a few hours. The main feature of this band is the activity tracker. It tracks how many steps you take and presents it in two ways on the app, both of which are well-ordered. The graph lets you know when the distribution of the steps you have taken and when while the main page tell you the total number of steps taken. A few people pointed out that an unusually high number of steps were reported when at home, which was also the case for me. When outside it was at its best with very little error, if any. Moving your arm as if having a look at the watch will tell you how far you are from achieving your daily target with the help of glowing LED’s. Suppose you are nearly 2/3rd of the way through to your target, 2nd LED will blink with the 1st one staying on and 3rd being off. Now many would say there is no calorie counter which is what is essential for a fitness tracker. I would say it can be done through the app at any time if Xiaomi wishes to do it.  
My experiences wearing the band were very nice as it was noticed by many and everyone goes “that is not a watch what is it?” or “Why are there lights flickering on your wrist?” The best reaction I have to say was from my friend who noticed me looking at my band twice, first time ignoring the lights but taking my phone out the next. I told him that I had set Light blue for twitter and green for Whatsapp hence I knew when to take out my mobile. He said “WOW! I would know when to take the phone out in class” Apart from the design the best part about this device is its battery. There are two ways you can use this thing, as I call it the normal way and the geek way. Normal would be to use it just to track your sleep and activity, whereas the geek would love to get more out of the device aka notifications, etc. When using in normal mode you can use it for more than 45 days at a stretch. And when in geek mode the battery takes a noticeable hit and reduces to 15 days or so depending on the amount of notification you enable. This is purely based on how you customize it. After a month’s usage I would say I have grown used to it being on my wrist and I don’t even take it out when I bathe ‘cause I just forget that it is there. In the end, I would say it is a shiny useful gadget.

If I were to suggest any improvements on this device I would love a heart rate monitor incorporated into the device. Including that would give the device another dimension and get more users on board. Yes the price would increase, but then it would also give the undecided user’s another reason to buy the band.

Link to the tweaked app: http://en.miui.com/thread-53761-1-1.html

PS: A tip to avoid the tracker popping out of the band (which does happen often in crowded places and did happen to my friend on his daily commute). Take a thin sewing string and fling it round a few times on the groove which is on top of the tracker. Now take the string and crisscross it one of the holes and do this once more before you tie the string nice and tidy behind the band. Make sure the knot is small and not uncomfortable while ensuring that it serves the purpose. This ensures that even if the tracker pops out, it stays tethered to your band and you would automatically notice when it does so.



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