Items tagged with wearables
Anyone who believed that TCL was only a maker of TVs could be forgiven, after all, the company does make a huge line of smart TVs with built-in Roku and other services, and many of them were on sale last month ahead of the Super Bowl. What you may not know is that TCL is into the smartphone arena as well and is a Chinese company that owns the Blackberry Mobile and Alcatel smartphone brands. Today, a new report has surfaced that claims that TCL is working on some very cool foldable display smartphones concepts, and one of the devices folds up like a smartwatch. Renderings of the devices have leaked, and an image of the device that transforms into a smartwatch that wraps around the user's wrist...
Read more...
Many people dismissed the Apple Watch as an expensive bauble when it was first announced nearly four years ago, but through three generations, Apple has begun carving out a larger piece of the wearables market. According to IDC, the overall global wearables market expanded 5.5 percent during Q2 2018 to 27.9 million units. More importantly for the companies pushing wearables, higher prices meant that the average selling price (ASP) of the category increased by 8.3 percent year-over-year. Apple experienced over 38 percent year-over-year growth to take 17 percent of the wearables market. Interestingly, much of Apple's strength in the wearable segment can be attributed to demand for the LTE...
Read more...
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 stream. Wear OS uses can now swipe up to see all of their notifications at once, and then tap on...
Read more...
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 2015 and Nokia quickly released the Nokia Steel shortly after purchasing Withing. The Nokia Steel...
Read more...
Samsung is getting ready to release another smartwatch, and there are plenty of rumors and speculation leading up to the launch. There is also some conflicting information out there. The name is no longer one of them—in a new listing with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Samsung refers to its upcoming wearable as the Galaxy Watch. It's a brand new listing with the FCC, so the information can be considered up-to-date and representative of the current build, and likely the final build since its presumably headed to market soon. On top of that, this is not the first semi-official confirmation. Just last week, Samsung registered the Galaxy Watch branding with the Korean Intellectual...
Read more...
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 as a smartphone themselves for making calls. The big feature that many parents want is the ability...
Read more...
Earlier this month word was going around that Google might be rebranding its Android Wear wearables operating system to Wear OS. That rebrand has happened and the very first developer preview of the new operating system is now available. There are a couple caveats to this early developer preview of the OS, with the biggest being that Wear OS is only supported on two Huawei smartwatches. The supported devices include the Huawei Watch 2 and Huawei Watch 2 Classic, and this release is in no way geared toward everyday consumers. Google is specifically calling attention to a few features of Wear OS in the developer preview. Google wrote, “To improve app compatibility, Android P has started the...
Read more...
Apple is rather notorious for being vague on just how many of each of its products that it sells (the company doesn't give sales breakdowns for specific iPhones and MacBooks, for example). CEO Tim Cook was recently at a shareholders meeting and gave some indication of how well Apple's wearables are doing overall. Wearables include the Apple Watch, AirPods, and Beats headphones. According to Cook, the combined revenue from all those products is nearing that of a Fortune 300 company. How much revenue does that suggest? In 2013 to be a Fortune 500 company you needed at least $4.825 billion in revenue. A Fortune 300 company would no doubt earn more revenue than that. However, there were no specific...
Read more...
Apple Watch And Android Wear Smartwatches Can Detect Early Signs Of Diabetes According To UCSF Study
Many wearable such as the Apple Watch, Android Wear smartwatches, and FitBit bands come with built-in heart rate sensors. While these are useful for gauging the impact of cardio-based workouts, it turns out they can also detect early signs of diabetes with a high level of accuracy, according to a new study by health startup Cardiogram and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). The study examined more than 14,000 Apple Watch and Android Wear device owners over the course of several weeks. During that time, Cardiogram collected 200 million heart rate and step count measurements, and used that data to train and validate a deep neural network called DeepHeart that can distinguish between...
Read more...
Android Wear, the customized and lightweight version of Google's full-fledged Android platform for smartphones, had fallen a little behind with Google having launched Android 8 (Oreo) several months ago. That just changed, however, as there is a new version of Android Wear that is based on Oreo, and it has already begun rolling out to device makers. As to when consumers will see an update, that is entirely up to each smartwatch manufacturer. Prior to this update, the latest version of Android (2.0) was based on Android 7.0 Nougat. Google began beta testing an Oreo build around a month that initially was only available for LG's Watch Sport. Having presumably squashed any major bugs and polished...
Read more...
Germany's regulatory arm for electricity, gas, telecommunications, post, and railway markets, has issued a ban on smartwatches designed for children over concerns that they can be used by parents to spy on their kids and teachers. Furthermore, the regulatory office is urging parents to go a step further and physically destroy these smartwatches, should their children own one. The agency has also taken action against several firms that offer smartwatches designed for children. "Via an app, parents can use such children's watches to listen unnoticed to the child's environment and they are to be regarded as an authorized transmitting system," said Jochen Homann, president of the Federal Network...
Read more...
It took three generations of smartwatch design for Apple to finally implement cellular connectivity into its Apple Watch wearable, and while that sounds great, it will all come down to how well it works. Unfortunately, early reviews are not all that glowing. There seems to be a connectivity bug that is preventing the Apple Watch Series 3 from properly using its built-in LTE radio.Over at The Verge, Lauren Goode says she contended with "notable connectivity" issues when reviewing Apple's latest smartwatch. The problem she faced is that it would try to connect to unknown Wi-Fi networks instead of grabbing hold of a cellular signal when she was out and about with just the Apple Watch, with no nearby...
Read more...
How do you follow up the launch of a highly anticipated handset in the Galaxy Note 8? If you are Samsung, you wait a week and then blitz IFA 2017 in Berlin, Germany, with a refreshed wearables lineup. Samsung did exactly that today by introducing three new items to the wearable category, including the Gear Sport smartwatch, Gear Fit2 Pro fitness band, and Gear IconX cordless earbuds. We had an opportunity to spend some hands-on time with each one of them. Before anyone brings out the pitchforks over perceived typos in the product names, that is not our doing. Samsung has seemingly waged war against using spaces in product names, hence the Gear Fit2 Pro and Gear IconX. it is quirky, but whatever....
Read more...
Samsung is certainly looking to make a splash during its forthcoming Unpacked event on Wednesday, August 23. The big unveiling will be that of the Galaxy Note 8, the long-awaited successor to the Galaxy Note 7 that went up in flames (literally or figuratively, take your pick). However, a couple of other items will be joining the show, including a new GearVR headset and a new Gear Fit2 Pro fitness band.Do not let the name of the Gear Fit2 Pro fool you, it will actually be the third generation fitness tracker from Samsung. Its second generation model is simply Gear Fit2 without the "Pro" label at the end. That could be a bit confusing for customers, especially ones who do not follow the wearable...
Read more...
