Items tagged with SmartWatch
In early August, at its Unpacked 2018 event in NYC where the Galaxy Note 9 was officially unveiled, Samsung took the opportunity to showcase its latest high-end wearable device as well, the new Galaxy Watch. Although the wearables market as a whole hasn’t quite lived up to initial predictions, Samsung has persevered and steadily iterated and improved upon its initial designs. As a result, the company now has a relatively extensive line-up of wearable products, targeting a wide array of lifestyles. The new Galaxy Watch is the polished, jack-of-all-trades of the family. It has the aesthetics...
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The smartwatch sector is starting to heat up, and according to IDC, the Apple Watch is leading the way. However, devices based on Google's Wear OS are also putting up a good fight, and they will now have some much-needed ammunition in the form the new Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100 Platform. Snapdragon Wear 3100 is the successor to the long-in-the-tooth Snapdragon Wear 2100 Platform that debuted way back in the first quarter of 2016. With its new platform, Qualcomm is promising big gains not only in performance, but also in power efficiency. Snapdragon Wear 3100 is powered by a quad-core Cortex-A7...
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Google is revamping its Wear OS (formerly known as Android Wear) platform for smartwatches, with a focus on making it quicker and easier to access information and notifications. Users can also expect more proactive help from the Google Assistant, the company says, along with "smarter health coaching" (which was previously rumored), all by simply swiping. "We’re evolving the design of Wear OS by Google to help you get the most out of your time," Google stated in a blog post. Part of that entails making it easier to browse, dismiss, and take action on notifications by way of a new notification...
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Qualcomm is holding a press event on September 10, and while it is not sharing many details just yet, the invitations it sent out to members of the press hint that it will launch something related to smartwatches. Whether that means Qualcomm is getting back into developing its own smartwatches or plans to release a new smartwatch chipset remains to be seen. You have to go back several years to when Qualcomm made a run at the smartwatch market with the introduction of the Toq, which it released in limited quantities in December 2013. It mainly served as a proof-of-concept for OEMs. It had a 1.55-inch...
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Nokia is perhaps better known for their smartphones and strong telecommunications presence, but the company also has a foothold in the digital health market. The company has embraced the “connected health” wearables trend since their acquisition of French consumer electronics company Withing in April 2016. Nokia has continued to offer and relaunch many of Withing’s award-winning products, including items like the Nokia Steel HR activity tracking hybrid smartwatch we're looking at here today. Withing launched multiple versions of their Activité activity tracker in 2014 and...
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Anyone who has ever owned a smartwatch can tell you that they are great as long as they are charged nightly (or at least every other night). A watch from a Chinese firm Mobvoi dubbed the TicWatch Pro claims to be able to provide up to 30 days of battery life via a 415mAh battery. It can achieve that long battery life due to the fact that it has two screens integrated into the face of the wearable. The top layer of the screen sandwich is a traditional LCD that gives you black numbers on a greyish face like many digital watches and calculators that have been around for decades. Layered under...
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It's been quite a while since Qualcomm announced a new SoC aimed primarily at the wearables/smartphone market, and today the company is launching the Snapdragon Wear 2500 platform. Unlike the previous Snapdragon Wear 2100, this new platform is being targeted primarily at smartwatches designed for children. Snapdragon Wear 2500 has integrated 4G LTE connectivity along with all the supporting tech that device makers will need to build smartwatches for kiddos. Wearables for kids do have traditional smartwatch features integrated into them like smartphone connectivity and in some cases, they can act...
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The wearables market might not be exactly booming right now, but regardless growth is expected in the segment. Apple is currently leading with its Apple Watch. However, Google is aiming to take the wearables fight directly to Apple, and hinted back in May that it could be rolling out a Pixel Wearable running its Android Wear OS to directly combat Apple. We have some detail on what to expect from Google for its forthcoming wearable and at the heart of the smartwatches will be a Qualcomm chip. Qualcomm chips haven't exactly been confirmed, but there were strong hints from Qualcomm's Pankaj...
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Google has announced that it has added new features to Google Assistant on Wear OS that will make it more useful for smartwatch users. One of the new features is smart suggestions that allow users to choose from contextually relevant follow-up questions or responses to continue the conversation they start with Google Assistant. When users ask the assistant about the weather, they are shown the weather and can then tap on a suggestion to see the extended forecast for the weekend. Google Assistant can also allow users to hear the answers to their questions. An example is when a user is listening...
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Have you still not been bowled over by the smartwatch movement? Don't worry, not many people have so far, but LG is reportedly looking to launch a hybrid wearable that would combine the traditional mechanical operation of a wrist watch with the smart features afforded by Google's Wear OS. LG Watch Sport According to a new report, the LG Watch Timepiece will have a stainless-steel body with an IP68 water/dust resistance rating. The physical watch hands (with quartz movement) are said to sit above a 1.2-inch display panel with a resolution of 360x360. Other specs are similar to other run-of-the-mill...
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If you've bought into Fitbit's ecosystem of fitness-oriented wearables, then you might want to keep an eye on the company's next entry into the smartwatch space. After last year's $299 Ionic smartwatch launched to an unimpressed audience, Fitbit is reportedly back with an all-new design that is said to have "mass appeal". Leaked images of the smartwatch come courtesy of Warable, which show the device in a number of different colors with a multitude of band options. The smartwatch, which could be called the Blaze 2, will run an updated version of the Fitbit OS that debuted on the Ionic. The device...
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The third generation Apple Watch will be even less reliant on having an iPhone device nearby. After adding GPS functionality to the second generation wearable, it's said the Apple Watch Series 3 will feature an integrated LTE modem so that it can connect directly to high speed cellular networks without going through the iPhone.This would be a big feature upgrade for the Apple Watch. The first generation smartwatch from Apple lacked independent GPS functionality, which meant maintaining a connection to an iPhone in order to track distance when jogging, swimming, or riding a bike. Apple addressed...
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Apple warranties its Apple Watch for 12 months at no additional charge, though owners of the first generation (Series 1) wearable are getting two extra years of coverage to protect against swollen batteries, an issue that's been raised on multiple online forums. The extended warranty is specific to the battery and does not appear to cover other potential problems that might arise.It does not appear that Apple is notifying registered Apple Watch owners directly about the extended warranty coverage, and is instead making sure that its employees are up to date on the new policy."Apple has extended...
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I have a confession to make—I like smartwatches. Not the janky ones that are little more than glorified fitness bands and cheaply made (to ether their own), but classier looking timepieces. It took some time for me to come around to them, as I didn't see the point in slapping a clock to my wrist when there's a smartphone in my pocket. But I did eventually came around. The same can't be said for Huawei CEO Eric Xu Zhijun, who quite frankly is not a fan of wearables."I am always confused as to what smartwatches are for when we have smartphones," Zhijun said during Huawei's Global Analyst Summit 2017...
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