Amazon ’s Halo banding , the company ’s first fitness tracker , pull in critique when it launch because of its two marquee feature : body avoirdupois scanning and spirit depth psychology . Several limited review — includingGizmodo’s — key out the gadgetascreepyandinvasive . You might call back that would lead Amazon to perhaps rethink its approach to wellness tech . Instead , Amazon ’s doubling down witha newfangled featurethat uses your smartphone television camera to rate your “ Movement Health . ”
Movement Health supposedly uses unreal intelligence , computing machine visual sense , and machine learning to analyse your functional fitness , or how well your body handles bm that can aid with everyday tasks — think bend to peck up your groceries , lifting a child , or moving a heap of dishes from a locker to the counter . Trying to aid people maintain a stage of functional fitness is a good and noble finish . I ’m just not certain Amazon ’s really imagine this whole thing through .
Here ’s how it works : The Halo app will guide a drug user through a just about 10 - minute assessment involving single leg counterweight , forward passado , overhead squats , overhead reaches , and invertebrate foot - together knee bend . The app gives you a grade out of 100 and a equipment failure of your results in term of stability , mobility , and posture in different areas of your body . After that , the servicing will urge 5 - 10 instant guided TV of corrective exercises to help you improve your imperfect areas . The idea is to do these shortsighted exercising at least three times a workweek , and to retest every 2 - 4 weeks .
Image: Amazon
Because this is Amazon , theannouncement blogalso gets into privacy . Your judgement video are encrypted , sent to the swarm , and then deleted once they ’ve been incline through the algorithm .
This feature is n’t as creepy or problematical as body fatness scanning or tone policing . The concept also is n’t refreshing — there are a fistful of physical fitness apps that take to psychoanalyze your form . On the aerofoil , I can see how someone might imagine this is really useful . But as part of the whole Halo experience , it ’s a minuscule half - baked .
Amazon toldthe Vergethat while the algorithms were educate on a diverse set of bodies , you ’re actually grade against some cloudy , unvarying ideal that may not really think over what ’s really best for your specific needs , goals , and capabilities . All that does is leave you with a technically impressive feature article that absolutely color over contextualizing how Movement Health dozens relate to your overall wellness . What is the motivator to do these exercises ? To amend your Amazon Halo Movement Health score because that might imply you ’ve restore your bodily … stability ? And that means you might have an well-heeled fourth dimension lifting heavy objects ? Even if what you really want is a completely different wellness or physical fitness goal ?
Image: Amazon
It ’s not that this feature is needs bad . It ’s not even live yet , so it ’s impossible to assess its effectiveness flop now . But who exactly is this for ? Does anyone take the air around mean to themselves , “ Oh g , lifting groceries has catch elusive lately . Let me take hold of my headphone so it can narrate me on a scale of 1 - 100 how good my left-hand berm mobility is so that I know exactly which 10 - second exercises to do to make that . ”
More likely , you ’d think to yourself , “ Wow , I have noodle arm . I want to change that . Let me look up way to beef up my upper body . ” Or maybe you ’d just get one of those rolling grocery pushcart and call it a Clarence Shepard Day Jr. .
That ’s the baffling affair here . Amazon Halo is purposefully simplistic in design — the band does n’t even have a showing and its canonic activity tracking is n’t specially informative . And yet its marquee features are over - orchestrate to puzzle out problems that do n’t really live in unsettling , invasive direction . They ’re also all weirdly fixate with pass judgment you based on badly - fix standards . It ’s almost like this whole weapons platform ’s purpose is to show off Amazon ’s technological strengths and half - heartedly stake a claim in the wearables market rather of actually serve people progress to their wellness and seaworthiness finish .
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