The Nike FuelBand SE is a pretty sleek looking device and with Nike’s background in fitness and with their strong branding, it certainly looks like it has what it takes to be a great product. The downside, however, is the fact that the FuelBand SE does not support Android, which was explicitly stated by Nike. What this means is that as far as accessories are concerned, the Nike FuelBand SE is an iOS-exclusive piece of hardware. But why is this? Speaking to the folks at Pocket-Lint, Stefan Olander, vice-president of Digital Sport at Nike was stated that Bluetooth 4.0 LE has not been widely adopted by Android devices yet, as opposed to the iPhone where Bluetooth 4.0 LE was introduced with the iPhone 4s.
“With 200 Android devices available on the market, Bluetooth LE hasn’t really matured for Android yet and so we felt that we couldn’t get the most out of an app on Android at this time […] With iPhone we have one set of hardware, and can delve deeper into the operating system to get the most out of what we can do. We’ve worked with Apple for seven years and like that they set the bar high for themselves as well as others. It is about the experience.” Based on that statement, it would suggest that Android support could come in the future, but Olander failed to answer if FuelBand SE would arrive with Samsung or HTC support somewhere down the road. In the meantime for those looking for a fitness device, there are several alternatives out there.