Nike showed off the second generation of its FuelBand fitness wearable last night and also announced an update to the FuelBand app for iOS. The new version of the FuelBand brings Bluetooth 4.0, or Bluetooth LE if you prefer, which allows the FuelBand to be constantly connected and synching to a users’ iOS device without draining battery life. The new spec gives rise to some new features on the app which are designed to encourage more activity from FuelBand users.

• ‘Sessions’ is a new feature that allows users to track how much Fuel an activity earned doing a specific activity. If a FuelBand user goes for a run, they would start a ‘Session’ before and finish it afterwards to define the duration of the ‘Session’.
• ‘Win the Hour’ allows users to set predefined goals for hourly activity which the FuelBand app will use to remind them to either be more active or notify the user that they have achieved their goal and won the hour.
• ‘Fuel Rate’ is a graphical representation of the intensity of a particular activity to show users how much Fuel/minute that activity earns.

Gizmodo (who attended the launch event) are reporting that the FuelBand now also has the ability to track Yoga, which the previous generation had difficulty in gauging, as well as being able to track quality of sleep which is a feature that FitBit’s range of products has had that the original FuelBand did not.

The FuelBand SE will go on sale in France, Germany and Japan, in addition to the U.S., UK, and Canada which means that we still have no local FuelBand availability in SA.

Source: Nike