Q: Will Rowing in Motion become available on Android or Windows Phone?

Short answer: No. We understand your desire to use our Apps with a device you may already have. It’s our philosophy to build on inexpensive and widely available hardware. We know that having the right hardware in hand is a strong argument to try Rowing in Motion.

On the other hand, it’s our desire to built a reliable and accurate measurement tools that meets the high demands of professional athletes and coaches. Many of our customers are part of national teams and fight for medals at World Championships and the Olympics. Our data must be absolutely reliable to give them the best feedback possible. That means that we are especially reliant on the quality of the sensor hardware we make use of. The Apple Ecosystem makes that easy for us. There’s only two different sensors they use across all their devices (as of 2012) and their characteristics are suitable for the level of accuracy we need.

On Android, we have a vastly heterogenous hardware landscape. The sensor hardware used in these devices varies widely, between sensors that are on par or better than the sensors in Apple’s devices to sensors that are so poor, you can’t even reliably run tilt-games on them. The same is true for Windows Phone to a certain degree. Add to that, that developing an application for multiple platforms is extremely costly and it’s easy to see why expanding on other platforms is not very attractive.

The good news however, is that Apple is constantly bringing new generations of their hardware on the market. And since everyone seems to want the latest widgets, the markets are flooded with old devices that are perfect to be used with Rowing in Motion. Getting a device, the boat App, waterproof case and mounting still costs you less then a speed coach.

We are proud to announce that a free lite edition of the Rowing in Motion – Boat App is now available on the App Store. The lite edition allows you to evaluate all features of the Rowing in Motion – Boat App including live coaching. The only restriction we put on the Lite App is that it will only process data for 10 strokes. You can of course restart the App after that and try another 10 strokes. We hope the lite App will make it easy for you to evaluate Rowing in Motion.

Here’s another great tip: You can use the lite edition of the Boat App with our Speaking Strokewatch App to try live coaching without spending a single cent.