You can use one to entertain the kids, and you can use another to check the news. You can use one to keep in touch with old pals, then another to find out the time of the next train, and once you’ve done all that you can use one to have the groceries delivered to your door.

Mobile phone apps are certainly settling into their role as our personal assistants, taking much of the effort out of the daily slog. And, like anything that becomes so popular so quickly, they’ve also become the centre of a huge and lucrative industry.

The fitness industry has never shied away from making a buck, as we all know, so it’s no surprise to find it right at the heart of the apps game. Hundreds have sprung up, from the simple to the convoluted, and from the dull to the inspired, all promising to have us lean and trim by this time next year.

Along with the likes of Wii Fit and Xbox Kinect, apps are playing a huge role in changing how we approach fitness — particularly by allowing us to record and analyse our own habits.

And while there’s no easy way to shed pounds or tone up, most of us will gladly take anything that keeps us motivated along the way.

It’s a jam-packed market, though, and a look at the health category on iTunes can be a bit daunting — so let’s have a look at a few notable examples, and what they offer.

Couch to 5k (€2.39)

This is the one they’ve all been talking about. The one that’s given fitness apps their reputation as the miracle workers of the digital age, and has more positive testimonials than the rest put together. The idea of C25K, like all the best apps, is simple.

Start as a sloth-like creature surrounded on your sofa by discarded crisp packets and covered in crumbs, go through a simple nine-week prescribed training programme — the type that would be condensed to a musical montage if you were in a movie — and finish as a refined and brilliant athlete.

Well, someone who can run a solid 5km without stopping, at least.

Pros: The Couch to 5k app — one of several which works off the C25K training programme — is slick-looking, and even offers you a choice of which voice you’d like to tell you to start, walk, run or stop.

Your music can be integrated, too, making for an all-round perfect companion.

Cons: It won’t offer much to experienced joggers, or even those who are starting with a high level of fitness from sport or other activities.

It also lacks a focus on nutrition or diet, which can be major hurdles for beginners. But for those who need a bit of motivation to get up and go, it’s hard to imagine a more suitable app.

Daily Workout series (free, with premium versions available for €0.79 per app)

The most basic of all the fitness apps, Daniel Miller’s Daily Workout series is exactly what it says on the tin: a collection of five-minute workout programmes, broken into smaller exercises with short video clips to accompany each one.

From Daily Butt to Daily Cardio, and from Daily Ab to Daily Arm, it’s perfect for the days where a trek to the gym seems like too much of an, erm, stretch.

Pros: It’s the clips that really make this app. While the written explanations may clarify the finer points, seeing the workouts performed in front of you makes it very difficult to go wrong. A timer counts you down through the short sessions, and a cheering crowd sound-effect makes you feel wonderful about yourself when it’s all over.

A premium upgrade, for the princely sum of €0.79, gets you an ad-free version with an extra routine thrown in to shake things up. However you’d be better off spending the money on a bar of chocolate and using the guilt to motivate yourself instead.

Cons: One major flaw comes in the interface. Amateurish design and the comic sans font, which we all thought went out with the 1990s, make it somewhat difficult to take this seriously — a bit like your personal trainer showing up for a session in a clown costume.

But that’s a small hindrance to a cheap and otherwise handy little program.

iMapMy series (Free, premium versions available for €1.59 each)

Like all the best apps, the ones in this series can allow us to do the impossible — or at least the things we’d never have bothered with before.

By tracking and updating your location via Google Maps, the iMapMy apps record your movements, your distance covered, your time and even your elevation at different points in the journey.

Sure, you could use a stopwatch and an Ordnance Survey map. But you won’t, will you?

Pros: Once you’re finished, a record of what you’ve done can be uploaded online — meaning you can log in, check back over every workout you’ve done and view your progress over a number of days, weeks or months.

Most of us know that there’s nothing more encouraging than viewing your own progress, and so the iMapMy series proves itself to be both a handy tool and a supportive, backslapping pal.

Cons: As this app depends on connectivity. Going into areas of low coverage can cause problems, which may be particularly jarring for people like myself who use Phoenix Park to run and cycle.

DailyBurn (free, with various optional upgrades)

At its most basic level, this app is simply a balancing act — you tell it how much you’re eating and how much you’re exercising, it will do the sums for you and keep an objective view of your fitness mission.

However, the most intriguing element comes within the paid upgrades, particularly the trainer consultations.

Pros: For just €3.99, you can buy a ‘consultation’ with a real personal trainer, who views your recorded data on the app — your eating habits, your exercise scheme and your stated aims — to develop a regime for you.

Cons: It’s not real face-to-face contact, and it’s easy to con someone who can’t physically see you or gauge your condition like a real trainer.

They won’t ring you if you’re absent from the gym for a fortnight, nor will they be there to push you through the last kilometre of your run, but for €3.99 a pop, it certainly has its appeal.

Meal Snap (€2.39)

While the bulk of health apps centre around exercise and fitness — what goes out — there’s a whole other side dealing with diet and nutrition — what goes in. Meal Snap is surely one of the most talked-about apps in this category.

It’s the sort of thing that would have been quite unimaginable five years ago, yet here it is: you get your meal, whip out your phone, take a photo of the food and up flashes a count of how many calories are contained therein.

Pros: The benefit of Meal Snap is not in accurate readings or handy shortcuts. Instead, it’s in providing you with an awareness of what, when and how much you’re eating — and an improved consciousness towards such things is the first step in any fitness battle.

Cons: It may be just a guideline, but sometimes the estimates provided can have a variable range of about 300 calories. At around 15pc of your total recommended daily intake, this is quite a substantial amount of wiggle room.

It can also be easily conned — hide a cheesecake inside a salad, the app will be none the wiser, and your conscience will remain clear even if your arteries don’t. You’ll also end up with bits of salad on your cake, but hey, that’s the price you pay.

Nike Training Club (Free)

This crowd have done some wonderful things with iPod, not least the Nike+ technology that brought the recording, analysis and development of personal exercise to a whole new level. Indeed, the Nike+ has an app of its own, whereby you can track your running via Google Maps (like the iMapMy series), and that’s a handy addition to its genre.

Surprisingly, they seem to have hit a bit of a bum note with this, their flagship fitness app.

Pros: There’s a huge range of exercises to suit all sorts of aims on this app, and it looks slick and professional. It also features a rather clever rewards system, whereby content can be unlocked after a certain amount of training.

Cons: It’s not that Nike Training Club does anything wrong. It’s just that it bears every hallmark of an app developed in a boardroom by people who only take off their office suits when they’re changing into their pyjamas.

Having no doubt gone through an arduous series of focus groups, the makers of the app have settled on what ‘young, hip, exercise-type people’ want — and the result is a disjointed and oversexed mass of hundreds of workouts, diagrams, exercises and other features.

It is free, though at nearly 500MB it gobbles up a huge amount of space for even the biggest iPhones — and it’s not an amount worth giving up for what you’re getting here.

In the current version, the exclusive content from the rewards system centres upon Lea Michele — Rachel from ‘Glee’ — who you would have to imagine is there because someone in a focus group mentioned her name.

It is a secret that Nike execs will take to the graves (along with their suits) but in the meantime, this will make most users yearn for the charming simplicity of the Daily Workout apps.

At least they were developed by a fitness trainer.

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