Your iPhone has plenty of sensors in it that can track your movement and general activity and it stores all the information for you to look at. But how can you see this information? Let’s find out…
Motion Co-Processor
Apple iPhones contain a sensor called a motion co-processor which is part of Apple’s A7, A8 and A9 systems which are incorporated in to the iPhone 5s, iPhone 6 and 6 Plus and iPhone 6s and s Plus respectively. The motion co-processor is always running in the background and tracks your walking, running, movement and on the iPhone 6 and 6s can measure altitude using a barometer – this means it can track when you go up flights of stairs too.
Apple Health
All this collected movement data is stored by your iPhone and can easily be accessed by going in to the Apple Health app. This app is easy to use and will show you all the information you need. Simply open up the Health app on your iPhone and look for the graph of information you want to see.
The first screen you see is your health dashboard and you can add as many or few items to this dashboard as you like. If you want to add to the dashboard the follow these steps:
- In the Health app, tap on Health Data at the bottom.
- In the List, choose the category of data you want to see.
- Once in the Category choose a data source.
- Flip the switch to Show on Dashboard.
- That data source will now show on your dashboard.
You can also get a calendar view of your activity so you can see exactly what you did on a particular day. To see this, you just need to press the Health Data option at the bottom of the Apple Health app and then tap on Calendar at the top. You will then be presented with a calendar and you can simply tap on a day and underneath the calendar it will show you all your activity for that particular day.
You can supplement this with additional gadgets too – things like fitness tracking bands, smartwatches, monitors or just about anything that measures you activity. Almost all these gadgets will connect to your iPhone using Bluetooth technology so that your iPhone can insert the information they find out in to the Health app too.