When HMD Global acquired Withings last year, it made its intentions clear: it doesn’t want Nokia name on phones alone! That thing seems to be coming true now, because Nokia has finally entered wearables market after completing the rebranding of Withings product portfolio under its Nokia brand name. From now own all popular Withings products will bear the Nokia brand on them, as it was announced by the company at this year’s Mobile World Congress.
But that’s not the only thing – Nokia has also launched 3 new products under its new product line. Let’s take a look on them and also on other products under company’s healthcare portfolio:
Nokia HealthMate App
First of all let’s talk about the app, because this is the home to everything else. All products listed below sync their readings to this particular app over Wi-Fi, and then this app provides all health advice that it based on that data to the user. Therefore, it must be very user friendly. Nokia knows this fact, so it has completely revamped the app with this rebranding. Original Withings HealthMate app was also fine, but Nokia has presented it with a minimalist UI that’s much simpler and easier to use. Traditional menu system used for navigation has now been replaced with five different tabs that sit next to each other in the bottom. Another major change is that the app can now show you health and wellness programs according to the level of your health. Currently there’re only five such programs in the app, with more coming soon. The five programs include:
- Sleep Smarter – a program aimed at improving sleep quality;
- Pregnancy Tracker – program for maintaining healthy wait during the months of pregnancy;
- Better Body – program for better management of body fat and mass;
- Healthier Heart – a blood pressure management program;
- And finally, Leaderboard, which is a program for becoming more active.
According to company all these program have been developed by well respected professionals of health industry. Majority of them are only eight weeks long, but the pregnancy program is 9 months long.
Overall, the app has now been made much more useful than it has ever been. And don’t worry – it’ll work with your existing Withings devices.
Nokia Body Scale
The first new product by company under this lineup is Nokia Body Scale, which comes with a touchscreen that shows you the trend of your body weight according to last 8 records. It also calculates your BMI automatically so you know where you stand according to international standards. According to company it’s also equipped with Position Control technology, which helps in more precise measurement by detecting your position on the scale. It’s available for $59.95.
Nokia BPM+
Another new product is Nokia BPM+, which is a premium blood pressure monitor priced at $129.95. The major difference between it and the original Withings monitor is that of the cuff – BPM+ has got a cuff that’s softer than that of original BPM. It’s also more portable than the original monitor.
These are the three new products. Other products are from existing portfolio of Withings, which have now been rebranded. They include:
Nokia Body+
The original Withings body scale has now been renamed as Nokia Body+, and it’ll cost $99.95. It’s different from its younger sibling in design, and also in data that it provides. Besides a trend screen of your body weight and BMI score it also shows your full body composition with fat, muscle mass, bone mass etc.
Nokia Body Cardio
Another body scale. But why? Because along with your full body composition, BMI and weight you may also want to see stuff like heart rate, pulse wave velocity, water percentage and much more than that. If you want to play with that much data and cardiovascular health is one of your vulnerable points, this scale priced at $179.95 isn’t expensive.
Nokia Steel
This smart(ish) watch is the automatic activity tracker that doesn’t require any charging, unscrambling of lights and changing of gear to monitor your activity and show you the progress. You can wear it as long as you want to, and it automatically tracks all your activities.
Nokia Steel HR
What BPM+ is in company’s lineup of body scales, Steer HR is in the lineup of smartwatches. Besides activity tracking it provides you information about your heart rate. With this watch on your wrist you can see your heart rate anytime. If you wear it during your workout session then it can also prevent you from overtraining. Besides that it also has features of texting, calling and event alerts.
Nokia Thermo
This is the temporal thermometer of Withings. While at $99.95 it’s significantly expensive than your regular thermometer, it is expensive for all the right reasons. It doesn’t require you to hold it in your mouth, ear or armpit – instead, it measures the temperature from temporal artery, which is considered the most accurate place for measuring body temperature changes. You just need to gently swipe it across the forehead of sick person, and its 16 infrared sensors will perform 4000+ calculations to determine the hottest point. The temperature thus measured is then shown on the screen of thermometer. Not only it’s accurate, it’s also a better way to take temperature as it doesn’t require any contact with saliva, earwax or sweat – way more sanitary than any other method.
There’re some other products too, like a Nokia Go activity tracker and Nokia Home monitoring camera. HMD wants Nokia in every potentially lucrative market, and wearables pose one such opportunity. It also makes sense for the company to enter this market because despite its fall from grace Nokia’s brand name still enjoys the trust of many customers, which is essential for success in this market of digital health trackers. How successful company will be in this game only time will tell. But one thing is certain – we can expect some great new health tracking products from company in coming days.
