Under Armour teams up with HTC on new fitness band: the Grip

Another tech company has entered Under Armour’s orbit.
Using the global platform provided by this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Taiwanese device manufacturer HTC and our friendly neighborhood fitness giant unveiled a new piece of wearable tech: the Grip.
It’s a sportsband that integrates Under Armour’s UA Record fitness-tracking app. With their first joint venture, the two companies are looking beyond those who want to casually track steps. This device is designed for “serious athletes.”

Alas, we were too busy keeping up with Baltimore tech happenings make it to Barcelona this year, but plenty of gadget-loving publications were on hand. Let’s take a look at what they saw:

• The band is designed to keep track of workout stats, nutrition information and allows you to share results with the world via social networks, reports Recombu.
• Gigaom notes the device has four sensors: a compass, accelerometer, light sensor and GPS. There’s no heart rate monitor, allowing a five-hour battery life with GPS.
• The Grip itself is “unforgivably bulky,” Gizmodo opines, calling it “more of a fitness cuff than a fitness band.”
• When it comes out this spring, the Grip will cost $199. ZDNet says that’s a “reasonable price for a fitness watch with integrated GPS, daily step tracking, and some smartwatch functionality.”
• The partnership that produced the device is more evidence that Under Armour is willing to look beyond Tide Point as it increasingly moves into fitness tech. UA spent $650 million acquiring MyFitnessPal and Endomondo last month, and registered another $150 million spend for MapMyFitness last year.

Those acquisitions added capabilities and users to UA Record on the software side. In the case of the latest wearable, UA left the hardware to HTC.