Items tagged with wearables
One advantage smartwatches have over their dumb brethren is that when you grow tired of looking at the same timepiece, you can download new backgrounds to freshen things up. So it goes with Android Wear, the custom version of Android built specifically for smartwatches, which just received nine more watch faces.Each of the new watch faces is from an "iconic fashion" designer or brand, including Ted Baker, Melissa Joy Manning, Vivienne Tam, Nicole Miller, Y-3, Mango, Zoe Jordan, Harajuku Kawaii, and ASICS. They all bring a unique flair to the Android Wear world, and best of all, they're free to download.These new watch faces are part of an ongoing effort to add a bit of uptown appeal to Android...
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Microsoft announced its second generation fitness wearable at a blockbuster event in early October that also saw the reveal of the Surface Pro 4 and the innovative Surface Book. While the Microsoft Band isn’t billed as a full-fledged smartwatch, it does come with a wealth of smart- and fitness-related features that are sure to please just about anyone that maintains an active lifestyle. The second generation Microsoft Band received its first major update on Friday, which adds music controls and activity reminders. With this update, any app that you use on your smartphone (Windows Phone, iOS and Android are supported) to playback music can be controlled using the Microsoft Band via Bluetooth....
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Do you know an Apple fan who made the nice list this year? If so, you might consider getting them one of Apple's smartwatch devices. Your timing is good because Best Buy is now selling the Apple Watch Sport for $249, which is $100 off its normal selling price of $349. That's the best deal we've seen for Apple's wearables line to date.It's even better than the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. For example, Target offered a similar deal two weeks ago, but you had to pay the full $349 up front and then you'd receive a $100 gift card (that deal is still going, except it's now $399 up front). The price at Best Buy doesn't come with any strings attached -- it's $249 outright (plus tax, of course)...
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At long last, Motorola is providing more details about its Moto 360 Sport smartwatch, including when it will be available. The U.K. and France get dibs on December 18, followed by a launch in the U.S. on January 7, which is when it will be available to purchase on Motorola's website and select online retailers for $299. Three days later, Best Buy stores across the nation will carry the Moto 360 Sport. So will Motorola's Moto Shop in downtown Chicago. As for everywhere else, Motorola says its newest wearable will ship to Brazil, Canada, China, Mexico, and Spain sometime in the new year. There are some notable changes in the Moto 360 Sport compared to its predecessor. One is the construction; the...
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Xiaomi's original fitness band was easy on the wallet but short on features. Most noticeably, it lacked a hear rate sensor, an amenity that's become pretty standard in the wearables category. Xiaomi addressed that shortcoming with its newly announced Mi Band Pulse while adding other features and keeping the price tag low."We heard you!," Xiaomi said when announcing the Mi Band Pulse's ability to keep track of your heart rate. The oft-requested features comes courtesy of an optical sensor that sits smack dab at the bottom of the device where it meets your hand head-on. Xiaomi says the heart rate sensor is as accurate as the one in Apple's Apple Watch.The Mi Band Pulse also does a "far better job...
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The second generation Microsoft Band is an impressive fitness wearable, packing in 11 sensors and a curved, AMOLED touch screen display. However, it is priced at $249, which puts it $50 above the debut price of its predecessor. That brings us back to the original Band. Just last month, Microsoft had the wearable on sale for a low, low price of $99. At the level, we figured that stocks would deplete relatively quickly and fitness gurus would be forced to pony up for the more expensive second generation Band. That’s obviously not the case, as retail partner Best Buy still has plenty available, and has dropped the price by another $20, taking the original Band down to just $79.99. Don’t get us wrong,...
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By the end of the year, market research firm eMarketer predicts that 39.5 million U.S. adults (18 years old and over) will use wearables, a category that includes smartwatches and fitness trackers. If so, it will mean the category has grown nearly 58 percent compared to last year, though it's just the beginning of bigger numbers to come. The same research firm expects that more than twice as many adults will buy into the wearables category by 2018, and just one year later, two in five Internet users will wield a wearable device of some kind. At present, wearables are most popular among U.S. adults between 25 and 44 years old. Presumably these are tech savvy individuals who aren't scared off by...
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We've sure come a long way since cell phones exploded in popularity. It used to invoke a great feeling to hold out that flip-phone and admire its sheer awesomeness. Today? Most would laugh at those older devices. Now, we have super advanced smartphones that can do everything from take great pictures to play videos to check your heart rate. And, as if that wasn't enough, we've since piled on tablets, smartwatches, and many other smart devices or wearables. With so much personal fragmentation like this, it can be a bit frustrating that if someone calls you, and you happen to be nowhere near your phone, you're not going to know about it. Wouldn't it be nice to leave the house for a jog and be able...
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Is the world ready for a luxury smartwatch running Android Wear, a special version of Android designed specifically for wearables? We'll find out in another 27 days. Come November 9, 2015, Tag Heuer will launch a premium smartwatch driven by Android Wear, and it will have a premium price tag to match. Tag Heuer CEO Jean-Claude Biver told CNBC in an interview that his company's forthcoming smartwatch will cost $1,800, which is $400 more than the figure that was making the rounds in previous reports. That's a lot to ask for a wrist accessory, though it's still far cheaper than Apple's top end Watch Edition, which starts at $10,000. There's a countdown timer on Tag Heuer's website that leads up...
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Microsoft made a bigger splash during its hardware event today than Shaquille O'Neal doing a cannonball in a kiddie pool. It unveiled new phones with fancy Windows 10 features, an updated Surface tablet, its first true laptop (not a 2-in-1), and a curvaceous fitness band, the last of which gains a curved display and yet another sensor. Picking up where the original left off, the new Microsoft Band is sleeker and more comfortable. It's also a little bit tougher, as it now boasts a curved, touchscreen color AMOLED display protected with Gorilla Glass 3. This change in design addresses the most common complaint of the original, which is that it felt too rigid and a bit awkward with its flat display....
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Pebble might have been one of the first companies to enter into the smartwatch arena back in 2013, but it has faced some stiff competition as new players have entered the market. Google threw its hat into the ring with the Android Wear operating system last year and hence gave birth to a number of smartwatches including the Motorola Moto 360 and the LG Watch Urbane. Likewise, Apple launched its Apple Watch earlier this year, and has seen a great amount of success in the market. Pebble hasn’t exact stood still; it announced the Pebble Time with a 64-color e-paper display and followed up with the Pebble Time Steel, which ditches the plastic body for, well, steel, and slightly longer battery life....
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If you have a Benjamin burning a hole in your pocket, you can bring it to Best Buy and walk out of the store with a Microsoft Band (plus tax, of course). That's right, Best Buy has marked down the price of Microsoft's fitness wearable to just $100, which is half off the device's regular price and $50 less than the lowest discount we've seen previously.It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why Best Buy is selling Microsoft's wearable at such a hefty and attractive discount. Microsoft has made it known that it's holding a Windows 10 hardware event in New York City on October 6, and rumor has it one of the new products on tap is a second generation fitness band.We've even seen some supposed...
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Samsung announced their latest smartwatches a couple of days ago, the Gear S2 and Gear S2 Classic. We’ve got all of the initial details and imagery from Samsung’s release posted here if you’d like to check them out. To quickly reiterate some particulars, both of these smartwatches feature 11.4mm thin casings and 1.2-inch, 360x360 displays that are complete circles, unlike the “flat tire” displays used on the Moto360. At the heart of the Gear S2 is an undisclosed Samsung-sourced 1GHz dual-core processor paired with 512MB of RAM. NFC technology is incorporated into the watches as well, which will support Samsung Pay in the near future. The Gear S2 and Gear S2 Classis are IP68 certified for dust...
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Perhaps much to the chagrin of mobile electronic device makers, we can always count on Evan Blass (known as @evleaks on Twitter) to provide early looks at unreleased products. He's done it again, this time by showing off what look to be official press renders of Motorola's new Moto 360 smartwatch.The press photo shows two second generation Moto 360 models. One of them sports completely blacked out hardware, including the meta wrist band, and the other pairs a silver motif with a leather wrist band. Not that we haven't seen the Moto 360 before, though it's nice to spy a non-blurry press photo versus snapshots taken on the run.Blass isn't the only one leaking photos of the new Moto 360 online....
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If there's one thing we know about electronics, it's that gold is best! As Apple's VP of Gold Raffi Jaharian so eloquently put it, "You think gold, you think all the best stuff: jet ski, nice watch, sports...shrimp." Sure, Raffi might be a fictitious character, and maybe Apple doesn't even have a VP of Gold position; it hasn't stopped competitors from jumping on the gold bandwagon, the newest of which is LG with its Urbane Luxe smartwatch. The limited edition premium wearable was designed in collaboration with U.S. retail jewelry company REEDS Jewelers. It's made of 23-karat gold, has a handcrafted alligator leather band that undergoes 50 separate steps in its creation, and comes in an exclusive...
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Remember when motherboards would only support CrossFire or SLI, but not both? It sucked for enthusiasts who didn't want to commit long-term to either camp, and there's a similar situation playing out in the fast growing wearables market. However, there's reason to believe that Google's Android Wear platform will soon support iPhone devices.If you head over to Amazon, you can pre-order the forthcoming Huawei Watch starting at $350 for a stainless steel version with a black suture leather strap. The Android Wear device sports a 1.4-inch full circle AMOLED display and scratch resistant sapphire glass, though what's most interesting about the forthcoming wearable is the OS support."Compatible with...
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For regular consumers, wearable tech can prove to be a boon for a multitude of reasons - it could improve our fitness and in some cases, increase our productivity. That being the case, it's no secret that the same could really prove useful when put into action in military situations. This is something the Pentagon has been mulling for some time. As Reuters reports, wearable tech is progressing so rapidly, that it just doesn't make sense for the government to go on its own and develop its own tech. Says Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, "I've been pushing the Pentagon to think outside our five-sided box and invest in innovation here in Silicon Valley and in tech communities across the country....
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It didn't take long for Apple to leave its mark on the wearables market. With the introduction of the Apple Watch starting at $349 and going all the way up to $17,000, Apple gambled that buyers would line up to pay a premium for a smartwatch, and it was right. According to data compiled by International Data Corporation, Apple is the second largest player in the wearables market behind Fitbit and is within "striking distance" of the top spot. Apple shipped 3.6 million Apple Watch devices in the second quarter of 2015, which is just 0.8 million less than Fitbit. That gives Apple a 19.9 percent share of the wearables market, compared to Fitbit's 24.3 percent. "Anytime Apple enters a new market,...
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When it comes to smartwatches, the Apple Watch is the 800-lb gorilla in the room. Sure, there are excellent smartwatches from competing platforms like the Android Wear-based Motorola Moto 360 and the Tizen-based Samsung Gear S2, but they all eventually get compared to the Apple Watch. It should come as no surprise that the Swiss watch industry feels bit threatened by the smartwatch phenomena, and much of the vitriol has been aimed at the Apple Watch. The latest to take aim at the Apple Watch is Nick Hayek, CEO of the the Swiss watch giant Swatch. In speaking with Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger, with the comments translated by The Guardian, Hayek railed against the Apple Watch, stating that it’s...
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The Android Wear platform was pretty rad to begin with (kids these days still say "rad," right?), but now it's even better. To start with, Android Wear users now have access to three interactive watch faces. With just a simple tap, you can change your watch face's design, reveal more information, or launch a specific app, Google says.One of the three new watch faces is called Bits. Choosing it gives you various information at a glance, everything from weather to unread email and upcoming meetings. These are displayed in up to half a dozen circles around the edge, with the time shown in a seventh circle in the middle of them all.You can also choose Under Armour, which is geared towards fitness...
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Sony on Thursday announced its second generation fitness wearable, the SmartBand 2. Described as a "multi-sensor lifelogger," the SmartBand 2 combines an accelerometer with new heart rate sensors that work together to monitor your pulse and heart rate variability so that you can gauge your excitement and stress levels throughout the day. It also provides insights on your sleep patterns. Like the version that came before it, there's no display on the SmartBand 2. Instead, you're alerted to things like calls, messages, emails, Twitter updates, and other notifications through vibrations and three bright pulsating RGB LEDs. And though it doesn't have a touchscreen, you can control music on your smartphone...
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Samsung still isn't ready to launch its next smartwatch, the Gear S2, though it did make sure to tease everyone with a couple of revealing images tossed into a promotional "Lookbook" of mobile devices. Most of the pages are filled with photos of the company's just announced Galaxy S6 Edge+ and Note5 devices, but the round smartwatch is clearly visible on the wrists of fashion models in two of the stills.You may know the Gear S2 as the Gear A or its codename Orbis. All three monikers refer to the same device, which Samsung designed to make a fashion statement. According to the commentary in the Lookbook, Samsung wanted to take a classic design and spruce it up for the modern era, and then combine...
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