I don't have a smart phone and I have a Garmin VivoFit.
It measures steps, miles, calories (pretty inaccurately unless you get the kind with the heart monitor) as well as giving you a goal which it bases on the step numbers you have taken. (This can get annoying if you are goal driven because as soon as you hit the goal, they increase it so eventually you could be walking all day, every day. I had to learn to set my own goal and ignore theirs.)
It will also show you colored bars when you sit for more than an hour and you have to walk to make those bars go away (the longer you sit the longer you have to walk to reset it). It's not a horrible amount of time but enough to stretch your back/muscles out, which is nice.
You sync it with a computer if you want to track progress over days but you can view your progress every day by clicking a button. If you sync it, you can see charts online that show various things like your step activity, progress over time and when you hit the goal that was set for you. If you wear it while you were sleeping and set it to sleep mode, it will also track your movement and how often you get up, which can be helpful or fun to review.
The version I have does not have a heart monitor but the upgraded one does.
I am overall really happy with it.