Samsung and Adidas have collaborated on a fitness cellphone intended to rival Nike and Apple’s partnership; called miCoach, it consists of a special handset together with a heart rate monitor, a stride sensor chip that clips to your Adidas shoes, “compatible Adidas apparel” (which I think means clothes, likely made of Lycra) and the miCoach website which can be used to create tailored training programmes.  They’ve even coined a awful buzz-phrase – “sportronics” – to describe the mixture of multimedia, fitness-level tailored training and real-time feedback courtesy of the handset.

The miCoach handset itself is a 14.5mm thick quadband GSM slider with high-grip casing, 2-megapixel camera, 1GB of internal memory and a 2-inch screen.  Bluetooth and USB connections are present, and it’ll be available in Dark Gray, Tech Silver, Pink Red, Cool Gray, Sapphire Blue, Misty Blue and Sweet Pink to suit whatever awful stretchy sports clothing you like to wear.  It’ll play music according to tempo or “motivational value”, while collecting performance data and heart rate, distance, speed and calories burned.  There’s even a voice to tell you to “speed up to power zone” or alert you that “15 minutes is completed”; I imagine that could get annoying fast.  It’ll be available in Germany and elsewhere in Europe from mid-March.