Microsoft Launches Developer Preview SDK And New Features For Microsoft Band

Microsoft is preparing to bring third-party apps to its Microsoft Band wearable platform. The company revealed today that it’s launching a Developer Preview SDK for the wrist-worn device, allowing third-party app makers to start to create apps for it, beyond the select partners, including MapMyFitness, that it already works with.

Opening Band to third-party apps means not only making it possible for devs to build apps for it, but it also gives Microsoft an opportunity to start building a library for future wearable devices, and to perhaps get more consumers interested in this generation and whatever comes next in less prototypey versions of the Band.

There are many other features making their debut today for Microsoft Band, including a new Bike tile for tracking indoor and outdoor rides, featuring heart rate monitoring, revelation tracking, GPS, speed analytics, recovery, a web dashboard and more. Guided workouts now include indoor biking routines, accordingly. Quick Read is a new feature that gives you easier-reading notifications at-a-glance, and there’s a virtual keyboard that uses Microsoft’s new Word Flow predictive tech, and voice input via Cortana, though both of these require Windows 8.1 on a companion smartphone device.

Microsoft Health gets some updates today, too, including a dashboard for the web that uses data from the Microsoft Band to populate, and HealthVault, and MapMyFitness integrations.

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