The Strava phone app now supports the use of external heart rate sensors that communicate via Bluetooth. This feature was previously discontinued. A little over a year ago, the business decided to do away with the functionality altogether, along with ANT+ connectivity.
The business claims that it has been working with the community to find a solution over the course of the past year. In the past, utilizing the functionality would occasionally result in a crash of the application. More information shows that the problem started because of old code that supported older ways of pairing directly with BLE/ANT+ devices.
The Bluetooth feature for heart rate sensors from outside has been turned back on, and both standard and premium members can now use it.
The complete statement is as follows:
“We were able to restore the Bluetooth function in the application for heart rate monitors after receiving comments and beta testing from the community. In addition, we were able to fix the issues that were causing the app to crash in the past.
It is now possible for all athletes to couple a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) heart rate sensor directly to their smartphone and monitor their heart rate in real time while they are exercising; a watch or cycle computer is no longer required.
Utilize it to maintain your workouts and rides in the appropriate training zones, evaluate your efforts after a workout, and, if you are a subscriber, obtain vital insight into your progress using heart rate measures like Fitness and Relative Effort.”
This essentially means that you can now attach a Bluetooth heart rate sensor directly to your phone through the Strava app and view statistics in real-time on your device. Although this is not a feature that sees heavy usage, a portion of the user base that numbers more than 70 million people will most likely find a use for it.
At this time, the feature is just capable of displaying heart rate. In addition, there is no information regarding whether or not ANT+ connectivity will be brought back by Strava.
“Our objective is to first bring out heart rate monitors with BLE pairing to check that it is functioning as planned before we look at extending to power/cadence meters,” said a spokesman for Strava. “Our goal here is to carry out heart rate monitors with BLE pairing.”
“We don’t have a specific date, but if our deployment of BLE pairing goes as planned, you can expect that we will look into supporting power meters and cadence meters in the future.”
