Hands-on with Samsung Adidas miCoach F110 fitness phone

Is that gym membership you shelled out for in January starting to look about as sensible an investment as a sub-prime mortgage? A little motivation from a personal trainer could work wonders, and needn't cost a fortune. Samsung has hooked up with sporting-apparel behemoth Adidas to create a real-time training system based around its new mobile phone, the F110. We managed to get our hands on it today at the launch in Valencia.

The F110 comes with a heart-rate monitor you strap around your chest and a small sensor that you tie to the laces of your trainers. These pass real-time information to the phone's miCoach software to monitor your progress as you run. The data collected by the phone can then be uploaded via your PC to the miCoach Web site, where you can create a personal training plan based on your fitness level.

Once a plan is created, individual training sessions are downloaded to the F110. As you train, the phone monitors your speed and heart rate and calls out voice instructions to keep you on pace and in your target heart-rate zone for the duration of your run.

Another neat feature is that the phone's MP3 player can customise playlists of your tunes to match your stride rate. So if you run at about the same pace as a toddler it'll select some sedate, down-tempo tracks. If you're a pumped-up sprinter it can pull some gabba techno from your virtual music rack.

The handset will be out in April and free on most contracts. Samsung says the handset will definitely be available on O2 and is currently talking to other networks about offering the phone too. Click through for more deets and pics. -Frank Lewis

Update: Read our full Samsung Adidas miCoach F110 review.