The Basis Peak Will Get Notifications From Your Phone In Mid-December

Basis Peak

While a fantastic device for those looking to track their workouts and sleep habits, the Basis Peak launched without the smart notifications you see on Android Wear gadgets or the Microsoft Band.

Starting mid-December, the Intel subsidiary will roll out the first in a series of firmware updates bringing notifications from your iPhone or Android device to your Peak. These will alert you to calls, texts, and calendar events (insert *praise* emoji here) on your wrist, delivered over Bluetooth LE.

In addition to showing alerts as they come in, the Peak will now have a notifications screen you can swipe to at any time to catch up on notifications you swiped pass to check your heart rate during a workout.

While some will point out that notifications are unnecessary for fitness tracking, the Peak serves you best when it’s collecting data for as long as the user is comfortable wearing it. If you’re the kind of person for which fitness isn’t that high of a priority, you might want to switch over to something like a Pebble or Android Wear watch for their convenience when not working out — which makes Peak usage less habitual.

Rather than concede the wrist to smart devices with a few fitness features that are enough for most people (or who can’t tell what good heart rate tracking actually looks like), Basis can give the Peak just enough notifications to keep the smart watch crowd from passing it over completely. Assuming the notifications feature is nice to use when it arrives, of course.

While that will be fun to test in a month, Basis is rolling out a new feature today that makes it even more useful for the fitness crowd. Peak owners on iOS can now send their heart rate to Strava, RunKeeper and Endomondo apps over Bluetooth GATT. Other apps on iOS and Android will eventually gain access to this data as well — you can periodically check this page to see if you’re preferred exercise app has gained compatibility.