If you only read American tech blogs you could be forgiven for thinking that the first add-on applications for mobile phones only arrived in July when Apple opened their App Store.  Of course, that’s far from the truth.  Java-based apps have run on lots of phones for a long time and there have been applications available for the Symbian operating system for years. In recent times they’ve become incredibly sophisticated too.

Just take a look at the applications Nokia has for tracking your life; they’re becoming highly sophisticated pieces of social media technology.  Before we get onto the really juicy stuff, let’s start off with something simple that’s also incredibly useful.

Nokia Step Counter is a pedometer – you walk and it counts your steps.  The thing is, because it’s built into your phone it’s capable of so much more.  Apparently doctors say 10,000 steps is a healthy amount to walk each day (although that varies depending on things like your weight, height, age and state of health).  Step Counter allows you to see how close you’re getting to a daily target you set for yourself.

Leave it running on your phone right through the day and it will tell you your step count, the amount of time you’ve walked through the day, the number of calories you’ve burned and the distance you’ve walked.  There’s also all manner of graphs to see how you’re getting on and you can compare your stats from  different days.

As a simple exercise tracker it’s fantastic.  Using it in the last few days I’ve found that I’m walking about 7000 steps on a normal day.  I definitely need to get a few more in there!

If you’re a real fitness fiend Step Counter may not be enough for you.  For you Nokia has Sports Tracker.

Sports Tracker requires GPS to work and actually traces your journey on a map, giving you live information on your current speed and the distance you’ve traveled.  You can even see live graphs, updated as you go, showing your speed over time, your altitude and other stats.

Once you’re done you can upload your workout to the Sports Tracker website and share it with others if you like. The program’s tracking is frighteningly accurate and it always gives me a sense of glee to see a line traced out on my computer screen showing my exact route with markers for where I was fastest, slowest and the highest altitude point of my journey.

Sports Tracker started off as purely a sports tool but over time it’s grow into something much more interesting.  The latest version of the software tracks the music you listen to as you work out and the web service will even display any photos you take and videos you record on your journey.  It’s even been used to create Position Art!

So Sports Tracker is great, but there’s something even more exciting on the way.  Nokia viNe takes  lifetracking to the next level.  It’s currently in private, invite-only testing so I haven’t been able to give it a go.  However it’s certainly looking good.

Much the same as Sports Tracker, viNe tracks your journeys using GPS.  It remembers the songs you play as you travel and stores the locations of photos and videos that you create along the way.  The finished journeys can be uploaded to the viNe website, complete with any photos and videos that you choose to share.

A widget will soon be available to allow users to share their journeys on their blogs or other websites.  Just think how fantastic that could be for travel blogs.  An interactive, accurate record of a journey with rich media to illustrate it.  I’ve got some great ideas for using it myself, I just need to convince Nokia to let me on the trial first!  You can see an example of how it’s been used in India here.

If you want to try out these apps you can download Step Counter and Sports Tracker from Nokia Beta Labs.  They’re compatible with recent Nokia S60-based phones.  viNe will hopefully hit public beta sooner rather than later.