The original Microsoft Band was hamstrung by its design. The Band was rigid, angular, and difficult to wear, but Microsoft has improved the situation with an all-curved design and a flexible, soft-touch band. The main module, housing the 320128-pixel AMOLED display, now curves to better fit the natural shape of your wrist, while the silicone-like band hugs your arm comfortably. On the display's edge sit the device's only physical buttons: the power button, which can also turn off the display quickly, and the "Action" button that selects certain options on the screen.
With the new Microsoft Band 2, you can handle incoming calls and voicemail notifications like a boss. You can reply instantly with standard quick response messages or you can create your own, making it easy to handle your contacts while using your Band.
How to manage Tiles and Notifications of your Microsoft Band 2
There are plenty of tiles to choose from, including Facebook and Facebook Messenger, Starbucks, Text Messaging, as well as Exercise, Golf, Run and Steps. The Band 2 will display a total of 13 tiles on the Start Strip but there are over 30 to choose from - more detail on those later. As a note, tapping on each tile allows you to read the notifications within it, or begin an exercise for example, both of which require input from the action key.
Features are where the Microsoft Band 2 shines, just like its predecessor, and if it wasn't for its design flaws, the Band 2 would be giving the likes of Fitbit and Jawbone something to worry about. The data delivered from the Band 2 might not match that offered by dedicated sportswatches like the Polars and Garmins of this world, but the Band 2 offers 10 built-in sensors - including GPS, heart-rate, UV, elevation, along with VO2 Max monitoring - along with notifications, all of which makes for a very clever band.
Then there's the Exercise tile. This tracks heart rate, duration and calories burned as standard, meaning it can be used for a variety of exercises such as group fitness classes, strength training or even yoga. There are also specific tiles for calorie tracking, heart-rate monitoring, elevation, and the UV monitor (which is useful if you live in a sunny climate and need to keep an eye on your sun exposure).
It depends on which platform you have connected the Band 2 with as to the level of functionality offered when it comes to smartwatch features. Unsurprisingly, you get the most when it is connected to a Windows device. We tested the Band 2 with an iPhone so tiles such as Cortana and the Virtual Keyboard weren't available to us. For those on Windows, Cortana allows you to reply to text messages, take notes and set reminders using your voice, while the Virtual Keyboard means you can reply to text messages without voice command.
A Smart Notifications tile collects a range of notifications in one place, mirroring your smartphone, while the Facebook and Facebook Messenger tile allows you keep up with the social networking site without getting your smartphone out at all.
As you might guess, the Calendar tile keeps you up to date with your appointments and meetings, while the Email tile delivers email previews. The Starbucks tile is a handy one, allowing you to pay for coffee using your Band 2, while there are also News and Finance tiles to keep you up to date with what's going on in the world.
Smartwatch notifications are instant and come through on the Band 2 when they appear on your smartphone. You don't get quite the same functionality as the likes of an Android Wear device or Apple Watch, but a Windows user will have a better experience than Android or iOS with the Band 2.
The Microsoft Health app is by no means as pleasant to look at as the likes of Jawbone's or Fitbit's equivalents, but it is simple to navigate and there is also a web dash that offers more information, much like Polar. Even if it's not the prettiest app, it still does the job well and there is a wealth of information available. It's also where the majority of Band 2 functions are controlled, including various settings, like which arm you are wearing your band on for more accurate results.
The three lines also lead to a section called device settings. This is where you can name your Band 2, change the wallpaper and text colour, manage the tiles that appear on the device itself, and change unit preferences.
If you go for a run every morning before work with GPS on then no, it won't last two days. If you go to the gym for an hour a day, use the Exercise tile to monitor your activity and have Twitter, Facebook and email notifications coming through to your Band 2, you'll get around a day and a half. To get two days, you'd be looking at maybe walking around as normal and using the Band 2 to count your steps, while also delivering a few notifications at the same time.
Once you have done that, your web tile is ready to go. Once you have a new entry in your RSS feed, the notification should appear on your band. If you want to force the update, just force the Microsoft Health app to sync with your band. After that, you should see the notification and also the badge count. Here is a shot of the one I did for testing:
Within Microsoft Health you can search for, build, and sync workouts, check out trends (day, week, month) based on your recordings, take a look at your personal bests and check out your GPS routes. You can also compare your own metrics to other people in your age / BMI / and activity level bands.
The WNS authenticates the cloud service and, if successful, sends a response of "200 OK". The access token is returned in the parameters included in the body of the HTTP response, using the "application/json" media type. After your service has received the access token, you are ready to send notifications.
By default, tile and badge notifications expire three days after being downloaded. When a notification expires, the content is removed from the tile or queue and is no longer shown to the user. It's a best practice to set an expiration (using a time that makes sense for your app) on all tile and badge notifications so that your tile's content doesn't persist longer than it is relevant. An explicit expiration time is essential for content with a defined lifespan. This also assures the removal of stale content if your cloud service stops sending notifications, or if the user disconnects from the network for an extended period.
For example, during a stock market's active trading day, you can set the expiration for a stock price update to twice that of your sending interval (such as one hour after receipt if you are sending notifications every half-hour). As another example, a news app might determine that one day is an appropriate expiration time for a daily news tile update.
Battery saver extends battery life by limiting background activity on the device. Windows 10 lets the user set battery saver to turn on automatically when the battery drops below a specified threshold. When battery saver is on, the receipt of push notifications is disabled to save energy. But there are a couple exceptions to this. The following Windows 10 battery saver settings (found in the Settings app) allow your app to receive push notifications even when battery saver is on.
If your app depends heavily on push notifications, we recommend notifying users that they may not receive notifications while battery saver is on and to make it easy for them to adjust battery saver settings. Using the battery saver settings URI scheme in Windows 10, ms-settings:batterysaver-settings, you can provide a convenient link to the Settings app.
The Microsoft Health app, the companion app to the Microsoft Band, will begin rolling out in the Windows Store this week to download onto your Windows 10 PCs and Tablets. Sync your Microsoft Band manually to your PC or Surface through a USB cable and manage tiles, personalize your band, update firmware, and more. The Live Tile will display your current step count and calorie burn.
The Service Health portal is part of the Service Health service. The portal provides you with a customizable dashboard which tracks the health of your Azure services in the regions where you use them. In this dashboard, you can track active events like ongoing service issues, upcoming planned maintenance, or relevant health advisories. When events become inactive, they get placed in your health history for up to 90 days. Finally, you can use the Service Health dashboard to create and manage service health alerts which proactively notify you when service issues are affecting you.
Service Health integrates with Azure Monitor to alert you via emails, text messages, and webhook notifications when your business-critical resources are impacted. Set up an activity log alert for the appropriate service health event. Route that alert to the appropriate people in your organization using Action Groups. For more information, see Configure Alerts for Service Health
Wearing the band on the inside allows a nice feature, turning the watch face on when you flip your wrist. This can save you precious battery compared to having the watch faces always visible, until you realize you turn your wrist a lot during the day, for example while eating. The band is made of rubber and it scratches quite easily. The scratches are visible when you look at the band from up close.
So I decided to write my own tile, showing the schedule of three Czech cinemas. The documentation for the Web Tiles is short and concise, the samples are ok, but there is no way to test your tiles other than deploying them to the real device. No data validity checker, no emulator and no good error messages. If you make a mistake, any mistake, be it an icon with wrong dimensions or invalid JSON manifest, the Microsoft Health app just gives you a generic error when trying to deploy the app to the Band.
Another annoyance is also related to notifications. If you turn on the Band, open a tile or go to some menu, turn off the Band, go on with your day and a notification approves, guess what happens? The Band vibrates, you turn it on and you are still in the last menu or tile and have no idea, what the notification was about. 2ff7e9595c
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