Roameo

Roameo is an Android app that counts your walked steps while talking on the phone. To quote the description from its official website:

Roameo is the one missing fitness tracker for the physical inactive. Is roaming through the rooms like a maniac while being on the phone the only workout you get? Roameo will track your step count so you can share it with the world. Don't miss out anymore to tell your friends about your awesome sportiness!

Well, yeah, that pretty much describes me.

Some history

I do indeed pace and roam around a lot while talking on the phone. I could sit down completely calm and relaxed, and as soon as I was on the phone, I had the urge to get up and walk around. I know I'm not alone with that.

At some point, I had a work gig at a company that creates sport and fitness tracking equipment, with all the app and web services to analyze your training and workouts and all around it. Naturally, I wondered what it would take to sneak "Phone call" as a sport / workout type into their system, but the code review process would make that rather difficult. So instead, I decided I'll create my own app that records the step count during phone calls and lets you upload it as session to Google Fit.

Project Ringstagram was born and eventually (well, actually very soon after) renamed to Roameo.

I did present the app to said company though, they didn't make me an acquisition offer. But, and that was my main intention, neither did they had any issues with me publishing such an app.

In a nutshell

So what is Roameo doing exactly? Again, let me quote the description from its website ..and technically quote myself then I guess.

Roameo will detect incoming and outgoing phone calls and utilizes the phone's step count sensor to keep track of your walking around. All call sessions are individually accessible for minute by minute step count break down and can be shared to social media and messaging apps on your phone - or optionally uploaded to Google Fit. A weekly summary of all call sessions and the daily achieved step count, session duration and average pace (i.e. steps per minute) is graphically displayed for you.

This is how this looks like in practice, and in very small size:

License

The Roameo source code is released under the GNU General Public License version 2.