Your Smartwatch Is Getting Smarter

That Apple Watch Series 2 you’ve been drooling over? Good news! It’s got some triathlon training-friendly features: It’s waterproof up to 50 meters, tracks heart rate on your wrist (even under water) and has built-in GPS. But while its own swim monitor is straight-up underwhelming, there’s already a new app that’ll turn your Series 2 into a swim-tracking champ—one that might soon rival your Garmin.

The free Swim.com app records stroke count, differentiates periods of rest from swimming, and tracks intervals, pace and efficiency. It also syncs workouts with Swim.com, where you can view more in-depth information and track your progress. Swim.com developers started working on the app in 2012 when smartwatches were rising in popularity—that year, Pebble’s smartwatch became the most funded Kickstarter campaign ever—so the app has already been tested across multiple wearables, including Android Wear and Pebble Smartwatch, giving them functionality that might make you ditch your dedicated sports watch for good.

“The leg up that dedicated devices had was in hardware features, and that gap is being closed,” says Swim.com president Davis Wuolle, who is also a former Canadian national team swimmer. “Athletes are athletes for a few hours a day when we train or compete. The device with software that can evolve, adapt and be customized to the user’s taste will win out every time. It’s the same reason people like Google Maps in their car, on their phone or Android Auto or Apple Carplay instead of using a GPS. The smartwatch is becoming a platform like the smartphone did in the mid-2000s.