Heart Monitor Keeps Track of Your Beats

by Anna Axster October 15, 2008 App Score: 3.5/5

User Reviews
2.5

Heart Monitor
Developer: John Ballinger
Price: $2.99 Download on the App Store

New Zealand-based developer Bluespark has come up with a very simple and great idea - a heart rate monitor for the iPhone.

The app works with the built-in microphone on the iPhone 3G (older versions have to use the headphone cable mic) to listen and detect heart beats. The user simply holds the iPhone either directly over the heart or on the pulse in either neck or wrist to determine the heart rate.

The interface of Heart Monitor is very well designed and for anyone who would use a heart rate monitor anyway, the price tag of $4.99 seems fairly reasonable. A great app for anyone who works out a lot, wishes to keep track of their heart rate or for pregnant women who need to watch their heart rate when exercising. Although this is a great app, our rating is a 7/10, since it is hard to truly establish the accuracy of its performance, taking both the microphone and its positioning into account.

Image Gallery: Heart Monitor

I Heart Apps

hmmmm......
TheRealGomez

I don't know how accurate this heart rate monitor would be because I get the impression that it would have a hard time recording the sound.
Tyler Durden

It is a lot cheaper than other heart rate monitors, I'll give it that.
http://www.bluespark.co.nz/heartrate John Ballinger

@TheRealGomez

Its very accurate since you are wondering, you will see many comments in the iTunes app store about how it was exactly the same as Polar Heart Rate Monitor.

The iPhone amazingly enough does not really have a hard time at all, if you place it correctly on the neck or chest the heart beats actually max the micrphone out.
I absolutely concede that if you are in a very noisy environment and you have a weak pulse it could have troubles.
But it does a lot of very smart things to filter out noise, erratic beats or missed beats and doesnt provide a result until it is statistically confident that the samples has got are consistent (eg Standard Deviation falls is very small between each sample).

I do invite you to try it, this app was 5 in Italy for a long time and has been in the top 100 in the USA so a lot of other people have found it really good.

Cheers, John.
Lois

This does not use an EKG to record Heart Rate, your pulse is not your heart rate.
comments?
http://bluespark.co.nz John Ballinger

Since when is your pulse NOT your heart rate? Is it something else?
EKG measures electrical signals emitted from the heart and can pick up abnormalities in HOW you heart is beating.

Heart Monitor can only really tell you your pulse which IS how fast your heart is beating. It is possible it could pick up other things like arrhythmia.

Cheers John.
Lois

Yes it is, A poloar transmitter will measure the actual electrical activity of your heart in moment to moment (or beat to beat) variation. Anything that reads off your wrist is not measuring this activity—it is measuring the opening and closing of an artery at a specific point. In the case of your wrist, that artery is the radial artery. On your neck, it is the carotid artery. Either way is going to be less accurate than actual heart rate. Iwould love to see the I-touch or I-phone be able to read right from the tranmitter being worn.

Happy Holidays!
Harry Margolis

Check out http://www.60beat.com

They have a way to get your Polar Heart Rate on your iphone. It is continuous heart rate for your entire workout. I've got one, it works great.

finally.

Harry