With all of the other great Bing apps for Windows 8.1 being ported to Windows Phone 8, it was only a matter of time before Bing Health & Fitness, the lone holdout, appeared. And that day is now: A beta version of this great app is now available.
Bing Health & Fitness Beta for Windows Phone 8 follows the recent releases of Bing Food & Drink Beta for Windows Phone 8 and Bing Travel Beta for Windows Phone 8, both of which are fabulous handset versions of excellent apps for Windows 8.1. As I noted previously, Health & Fitness was all that was missing. And in many ways, this is the new Bing I wanted to get on mobile most of all.
I knew it was coming. And you can see the app—but not run it, for some reason—in the Windows Phone 8.1 developer preview, so we also know that all of these great apps will simply be part of the Windows Phone OS going forward, just as they are on "big" Windows.
But it's here now. And based on just a quick pass through the app I can already see that it's one of the biggest, most content-rich apps I've ever used on a phone. I'll need to spend time with this one.
But off the bat we can see...
Massive panoramic experience with multiple content sections, each of which is color-coded, which is actually sort of unique. (The other Bing apps all use a single color scheme, I believe.)
Trackers. This app is stocked with health and fitness trackers, including diet, cardio, and even a GPS so you can use your phone like a Fitbit or whatever. These trackers can be pinned as well so you can access them quickly.
Fitness. This content section provides useful fitness articles and complete workouts, including strength exercises, yoga poses, pilates moves, and more.
Nutrition. This section has nutrition articles and videos and complete diets for a range of needs (weight loss, etc.) and from a variety of sources.
Medical. Here, you can find an interactive symptom checker (which is pretty amazing), plus medical articles and videos.
News. This section works like the Bing News app, but it's just news related to health and fitness, of course.
Microsoft services integration. As it should, Bing Health & Fitness lets you sign in with your Microsoft account so you can sync your fitness and health data through SkyDrive and to the app on other Windows PCs or Windows Phones. You can also connect it with the Microsoft HealthVault service for even more pervasive sync across multiple devices (including Fitbit and similar) and third party health and fitness services.
Rich third party sources. Bing Health & Fitness uses data from high quality sources like Healthline, Harvard Health Publications, EatingWell.com, AMI, and others.
Fully configurable. The articles are nicely customizable for any viewing needs. You can bump up the font sizes and spacing and so on.
In short, this one looks solid. I'll be spending a lot of time with this app.
You can download Bing Health & Fitness Beta from the Windows Phone Store.
