The rubbery fitness band has a curved 1.8-inch 32x160 PMOLED display and looks nice with its green and back design. Peter Chou, the CEO of HTC, didn’t spend that much time talking about the band. He told us that this is the first product coming from the previously announced cooperation with Under Armour and that both companies can get access to 130 million users that the company picked up with acquisition of Myfitnesspal.
HTC Grip can track walking, gym sessions, cycling, running and other activities, with GPS and four other sensors that were not officially named. The GPS will let you track your activities like running in the wild, even without your phone. We expect that one of the sensors is an accelerometer. The smart fitness band can track your workouts and your sleep, connect to social networks or use the Under Armour Record feature. You can challenge 20 of your friends and you will be able to track your progress with your Android or iOS smartphone.
You can receive call notification, view and respond to messages, or just skip to next song you are listening. It is IP57 waterproof, which means it should hold for up to being submersed in 1 meter of water for 30 minutes.
The battery life in sport mode is an underwhelming 5 hours with GPS on, but HTC claims that this is long enough for a marathon run. We just got official word on the specification of the Grip. It comes in three sizes, Small: 51.9 x 68.2 x 22.5 mm inner circumference: 145.54 mm, Medium: 60.98 x 74.57 x 22.5 mm inner circumference: 169.7 6 mm and Large: 68.92 x 85.24 x 22.5 mm Inner circumference: 199.51 mm.
The PMOLED display is 1.8 inches across, with 32x160 resolution, and it supports capacitive touch. It runs RTOS and STMicroelectronics STM32L151QDH6 processor. This is al ultra-low power ARM Cortex M3 processor with a 32MHz CPU, USB and 384Kbyte flash support.
The HTC Grip comes with 15MB flash, 8MB SRAM and 100mAh rechargeable battery. The company states that the battery should last 2.5 days of normal use or 5 hours w/GPS activated. The Grip uses Bluetooth 3.0 or 4.0 for connectivity and USB for charging.
The device has a Sensor Hub (STM32F411), G-sensor, Gyro, Compass, GPS and Light sensor and it comes with Vibration notifications, as well as Shock Resistant (compliant with MIL-STD-810G 516.6 Procedure I, IV).
The HTC Grip looks much like the Nike Fuel band, but it also has similarities to the Razr Nabu. It looks very similar to the Nabu, with an exception that the HTC Grip has a larger screen. HTC hopes that the US audience will be buying this product for a saucy $199, which is way more than FitBit or Jawbone. We will see if this one will be a success for HTC.
