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App Review: Sweatcoin

Giving Walking Around Aimlessly Some Pretty Fun Rewards

By Such A GeekPublished 6 years ago 4 min read
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When I had first heard about Sweatcoin, funny enough it wasn't through somewhere like Fitbit, or any sort of fitness related thing. It was actually through a time-monitoring app for my phone, which allowed you to take a look at other stats that users had willingly allowed them to post about, and that's when I saw the name.

Now, at first, the same sort of skepticism popped into my head in the same fashion as AppLike, but as we all know from the post that I have written about them, I was pretty pleasantly surprised as to what was in store for me.

So, I went to the App Store, downloaded it and let it boot up, and it took me step by step through the instructions, along with pretty clear explanations as to why they needed specific permissions from your phone. After reading through all of them, I completed my signup and began to do what it had instructed me to do, which was simply leave it running in the background.

As you walk around outside (it requests GPS permissions to verify it), it approximates the steps that you take outside, and then transfers them into the currency for the app known as Sweatcoin, which you can then use to go through the shopping tab and purchase the daily deals that are on with what is available being dependant on the market that you are looking at.

To accompany the daily deals, which typically are not too many Sweatcoins, there are what are known as "Marathon Deals," which are typically around 20,000 sweatcoins, which according to any of those deals, can be earned within 18 - 24 months of stepping. But these are pretty big deals* that are on here, so it quite understandable that it would require nearly two years or more of stepping in order to get them.

The UI is actually quite nice, with the four tabs (shopping, my balance, updates, and user page) being located along the bottom in some pretty obvious tabs. If I had one major complaint about any of the tabs, however, it's that after you purchase a coupon or free item from the shopping tab, there will be a red dot next to your balance, showing you that you have a new code and that you need to redeem it. The issue is that it is always there. Always. Until you go into the coupon code and actually click that you have "redeemed" the code, even if you haven't. I wish there was a way that you could simply "hide" the notification until you close the app down and reopen it, instead of having to go in and either hide it forever, or keep the red dot there.

Now, the biggest worry that I had was the shopping page itself, and when I looked into the offers that they were giving away for purchase, I had noticed something else that had worried me. It said that the codes were only valid for 48 hours. That's definitely not what I was looking for. I was hoping for something where, as an example, if I don't have the money currently, and my payday isn't until two weeks from now, then a code that expires for an interesting gadget or a good code for a new piece of tech is completely useless to me.

So I waited until I had enough, and I kept going and using the app until I saw something that was of note to me, but not something where I would be angry at myself if I let it expire because it was something that could have been extremely useful, or just pretty damn cool to have. That first thing was a coupon code for a Mous phone case (a review of which will be coming out soon as well), and I just bought it, knowing full well that I would not be able to buy it within the 48 hour window. And I didn't.

A few weeks later, I had gotten enough money to be able to purchase the case, and so I went back into my Sweatcoin and grabbed the code to use it, and... it worked! So, it seems that maybe not all of the codes will expire after 48 hours.

All in all, Sweatcoin is really quite good, and the entire process is actually pretty simple. I would definitely recommend a download if you go for long walks and want to get yourself something nice after a few months of usage, maybe even one of the rare free items that pop up in the marketplaces!

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Such A Geek

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