The Health Promotion Board’s National Step Challenge is back again this year, with a brand new step tracker to give away. It’s prettier looking than last year’s step tracker, but it’s available only to new Singaporean and PR participants on a first-come-first-served basis. Sign up, get healthy. There are rewards and even prizes to win.
This year’s step tracker is made by Oaxis. The brand is a little familiar to me, because I backed their InkCase project on Kickstarter. They now make an activity tracker called Omniband, or at least it’s one of the products featured on their website.
Curiously, there doesn’t seem to be any information about buying the Omniband from Oaxis. My guess is that HPB has commissioned Oaxis to build the Omniband for the National Step Challenge, and perhaps at a later time Oaxis may sell the product commercially on their own.
The Oaxis Omniband is a simple wristband-style activity tracker. The electronics module itself is held in a silicon wrist-strap, not unlike the Mi Band and other similar activity trackers. The electronics module is quite large, or rather, long, so even on my not-so-small wrist, the Omniband seems a little large.
In terms of functionality, the Oaxis Omniband is rather basic. It counts only steps. It can tell the time too, so you can use it as a watch. From the step counting, the Omniband also tells you the distance travelled, as well as calories burned.
The screen on the Oaxis Omniband is an OLED display, and it holds up pretty well in sunlight. It’s not touchscreen, but a capacitive touch sensor at one end of the display allows you to toggle the display mode between time, steps, distance and calories.
Battery life is indicated through a simple icon on the time display screen. The battery is said to last about a week, and charging it involves removing the electronics module from the strap, and attaching it to a USB dongle. The charging contacts on the module are quite similar to those you find on the Mi Band.
The Oaxis Omniband communicates with your smartphone via Bluetooth. You’ll need to install HPB’s Health365 app. The Oaxis Omniband doesn’t constantly sync steps all the time, but requires you to open up the Health365 app.
So here’s the exciting thing. You want rewards? Well, walk, get your steps counted, and earn points. If you walk 10k steps a day, you earn the maximum daily 60 points. What do you get with the points?
- Tier 1: 600 points gets you a $5 voucher.
- Tier 2: Additional 1800 points gets you a $10 voucher.
- Tier 3 – 6: Additional 1200 points gets you a $5 voucher.
You need 7200 points to get all vouchers, amounting to $35. Oh, that means walking 10k steps for 120 days. *Gulp*
The rewards end on 28 Feb 2017. So, you don’t really have many days left.
But there’s more. Every 760 points earned till 30 April 2017 gives you one chance to win other great prizes, and this time, they are really great. It’s just a chance, but well, you could win a pair of business class tickets on Singapore Airlines to Wellington, New Zealand.
You can go find out more details on the National Step Challenge page.
Meanwhile, remember to install the Health365 app and signup for the National Step Challenge, then go claim your tracker.