After a month of trying to justify why I needed a Motorola Droid, I finally gave up and admitted… I just wanted one.  In an earlier post I reviewed the Nike chip that works with the Iphone and Itouch.  I just added a free app to my Droid called RunStar.  It is a very basic app with more features promised in the next upgrade.

So far… I love it.  The droid uses GPS satellites for position and the distance measuring is spot on accurate.   You just hit start and it tells you when it has a GPS fix on your location.

Also, you can tell the designer actually uses his app because he put little features in that make it much more useful.  Here is what it has so far:

  • free run option tells you how far you have run/walked/biked,  it tells you how long it has taken and what your recent average speed was.
  • My favorite feature is a “lock the screen” button.  I was forever jostling my ipod touch and shutting it off or resetting it before the autlock kicked in.
  • The results button shows your recent run and gives you monthly and yearly summaries.
  • The goals button lets you set,  you guessed it,  goals.
  • It gives you a map of your run !! I recently did a run in fairly heavy woods up and down steep hills and it accurately mapped my route.  (Not sure it will do this well when the leaves are on the trees.)
  • The map feature shows your running route, marks the start w a green flag and a end with a red flag and also puts an icon for each mile and the cumulative time
  • You can select a play list and a power song like other running apps.

Future versions (proably not free like this one) will have  time run, distance run and pace run options.   Goals will be added for hours per week or pounds lost etc.

My feature request is for an option to pause a run (chase the dog,  tie your shoes)  and most importantly, a function that will warn you when you have been below a pre-specified pace for a pre-specified period of time.

One issue, however, I can’t seem to make much sense of the altitude graph. it always starts round 6 and slopes up gradually to 250 or so.  no idea what that means.
Not sure if the Nike app feature that reports distance and pace every 2 minutes is needed or not.  Maybe.

Overall , fabulous app for the price and I will definitely buy the upgrade if the author doesn’t overprice it like so many of the droid apps seem to be.

You can get details at Runstar.se

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