Microsoft’s Band fitness bracelet gets cycling programs, a virtual keyboard, and MapMyFitness integration

It’s been three months and change since Microsoft entered the health wearables market with its Band fitness bracelet. And now Microsoft is pushing out some significant updates to the device in a firmware update.

The company said that it wants to focus on adding “improved insights, features, and integration” to the Band.

Here’s how it’s doing that. First of all, there’s an enhanced dashboard in the Health app for providing a more effective way of showing users their various biometrics numbers.

The range of data collected increases with the addition of calorie and sleep measurements. For instance, the Band will now track users’ average bedtimes and average waking times.

One of the feature omissions in the original Band (and in many fitness trackers) was a set of cycling workout programs. Now Microsoft has added some, both for indoor and outdoor cycling, the company’s general manager of new devices Matt Barlow told us. There’s also a new dedicated tile on the Band’s interface for cycling.

The cycling app will use the heart rate monitor in a slightly different way to be sensitive to the movements of cyclists, Barlow said. The Band will sense elevation changes, ride duration and distance, and GPS location. It’ll report these things in the Health app’s dashboard.

Barlow said his team has made some improvements to the productivity features of the bracelet. The letters in the message notifications on the Band’s screen (coming from the paired phone) will be bigger and easier to read. Microsoft is also adding a virtual keyboard (which “predicts what you want to say”) to the Band’s tiny screen. Good luck with that.

The Band will also now integrate with the MapMyFitness app and with Microsoft’s HealthVault platform. This means that Band users will be able to upload their fitness data to either platform, and combine it with other data collected by other devices or apps on a unified dashboard. In HealthVault’s case, users may be able to share their Band data with their doctor, Barlow said.

Finally, Barlow said Microsoft is now ready to release a software development kit (SDK) so that third party developers can create apps for the Band.