Items tagged with wearable
The wearables market is booming right now thanks to smartwatches like the Apple Watch Series 4 that debuted in September, and other wearables like the Fitbit Versa and Samsung Galaxy Watch. When the wearables segment was young, devices were aimed mostly at technology loving people and were seen almost exclusively as a gadget for tech fans. Wearables are now making their way into other markets as a tool for fitness and to help people monitor severe health conditions like heart arrhythmias. Apple has focused its Apple Watch Series 4 wearable not only at tech and gadget fans but also directly at people...
Read more...
There are lots of wearable devices out there right now, and two of the most popular are the new Apple Watch Series 4 and the Galaxy Watch from Samsung. Right now, the Apple watch is $399 for the least expensive version packing GPS only. However, a killer sale is going on right now for the Galaxy Watch that makes the 42mm Bluetooth version $100 cheaper than the Apple Watch. Right now, you can get the Bluetooth Galaxy Watch with a 42mm face for $299 via Amazon and Walmart.com. If you buy the wearable via Amazon and are a Prime member, you also get free Prime shipping on the black or rose gold version....
Read more...
Fitness wearables are normally smaller devices that have features for monitoring things like steps, heart rate, and other data. The problem for people who like to be active in harsh conditions is that most of those wearables aren’t meant to survive bumps and obstacles encountered when skiing, hiking or backpacking. Those activities expose wearables to lots of rain, snow, sleet, cold, sharp rocks, harsh blows, and foliage among other hazards. Garmin knows that normal wearables, like its recently announced Vivosmart 4, aren’t appropriate for many rugged activities and for this more rugged...
Read more...
Love it or hate it, each fall most of the U.S. and other locations around the world adopt daylight saving time where we "fall back" and lose an hour from our clocks until the spring rolls around. Owners of the Apple Watch Series 4 in Australia, where daylight saving time (DST) rolled out already, experienced a bug that had to do with the Infograph faces on the wearable. Owners found their wearable stuck in an endless reboot loop that was reportedly caused by the large Activity complication on the Infograph Modular face spazzing out thanks to the loss of an hour. The Activity complication is meant...
Read more...
The Apple Watch Series 4 launched last month and packed in lots of features that make it one of the most appealing wearables on the market. A few of the big features of the smartwatch include ECG capability to detect abnormal heart rates and fall detection that can call emergency services if you are take a spill and can't dial 911 yourself. Anyone with a history of falls, particularly the elderly living alone, can appreciate that last feature. Falls represent a major cause of hospitalization for the elderly, and in those with conditions that make them unsteady when walking. Those two major...
Read more...
The LG V40 ThinQ smartphone launched yesterday, and we have our review of the smartphone up right now. Just as a rumor over the weekend hinted, alongside that V40 ThinQ smartphone launch came the launch of LG's latest smartwatch - the LG Watch W7. When the rumor of the W7's launch surfaced over the weekend speculation was that the wearable would run Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear 3100 platform; sadly, that part of the rumor was false. The LG Watch W7 launches with the aging Snapdragon Wear 2100 platform under the hood, has 4GB eMMC storage and 768MB LPDDR3 RAM along with a 240 mAh internal...
Read more...
The wearables market is going strong, and the two major competitors in that market are the brand-new Apple Watch Series 4 and the Samsung Galaxy Watch. A new smartwatch is reportedly set to debut soon from LG called the LG Watch W7. A rumor claims that the LG Watch W7 will launch with the slick five-camera LG V40 ThinQ smartphone expected to land on October 3. The tip comes from Evan Blass via Twitter, and he has an impeccable track record with leaks. The watch turned up previously in an FCC filing, but for now, there are no hard details on the wearable. The assumption is that it might use the...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
Garmin has announced a new wearable that has some very cool tracking capabilities called the vivosmart 4. The device is very slim, and the coolest feature of the wearable is that it has a wrist-based pulse oximeter. A pulse oximeter is a medical device that can track oxygen saturation or the amount of oxygen that is in your blood. Oxygen saturation is a key indicator of many health-related issues, especially at night. Low levels of blood oxygen during sleep is a key indicator of potentially serious sleep problems like sleep apnea. The vivosmart 4 can monitor oxygen levels at night allowing users...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
A company called Seismic, a wearable robotics spin-off from SRI International, is showing off a new wearable suit that is meant to help the wearer boost their muscle power by working with the user's muscles. Tiny motors embedded in the suit are designed in a way that contracts like human muscle. These tiny motors are embedded around the joints in the body and attach via grips in the clothing that function like tendons. Computer sensors are also embedded into the suit along with a computer for controlling the sensors allowing the tracking of body movement. The software can tell the artificial muscles...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
Fitbit and Google have announced that they have teamed up to innovate and transform the future of digital health and wearables. Fitbit will use Google's new Cloud Healthcare API to further integrate into the healthcare system by connecting Fitbit user data with electronic medical records (EMR). Fitbit says that combining its data with the EMR can give the clinician a more comprehensive view of the patient and improve care. Both Google and Fitbit also hope to help users better manage chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension using Twine Health, a company that Fitbit recently acquired. Leveraging...
Read more...
