In a nutshell...

A simple app that uses your N95, N95 or N82’s accelerometer to measure how far you’ve walked, and how many calories you’ve torched.

What’s it good for?

Making sure you hit your daily walking or running target.

Judgement time...

The good folk over at Nokia Beta Labs have been particularly busy recently, chucking out three apps in the last few days. Sandwiched in between the Nokia Communication Center and the Nokia PC Music Client comes the Nokia Step Counter, an app that passes the Ronseal challenge by doing exactly what it says on the tin: count steps.

How? Well, it uses the accelerometer, the N82, N95 and N95 8GB’s little-used motion sensor - Step Counter is programmed to cleverly measure your handset’s movements, working out which are the result o actual steps and which are just down to general use, pocket jiggling and so on. Oh yes, pockets: unlike a lot of pedometers, you don’t have to strap your phone to your belt and go all late 1990s for this to work; it can be placed in your pocket as normal.

The app is a snap to set up, requiring only a few basic measurements (your height, weight, step size) in order to get it calibrated. Then you can switch it on, tuck your phone in your pocket and get foot-slogging.

We took it on a trip to the supermarket (we drove there) and were surprised to discover that our trek through the aisles to stock up on next week’s groceries, plus the short walk in the carpark, was over a kilometer (and about 1,500 steps). Well, that’s our daily exercise done, then…

As your readings build up over the days, weeks and months Step Counter creates a diary, so you can compare days, see when you walked the farthest and burned off the most calories. If you’re so inclined you can even bring up graphs for instant visual info of your best days and off days.

All in all this is an interesting and, if you’re a keep-fit sort, useful app. It’s still only a Beta so we expect some usability improvements and feature additions to be made in the coming months - and maybe perhaps some kind of integration into Sports Tracker (it makes sense, really).