The website Android Police is reporting that Google is getting ready to ship a pair of Android Wear smartwatches under its own brand. This bodes ill for the health of Android Wear. The whole point of Android Wear was to create a software platform that OEMs could basically plug into hardware, but only about a half-dozen companies -- all of them pretty big, but at least one of … [Read more...]
About Dan Rosenbaum
Samsung to Put $1.5B To IoT Research by 2020
Samsung announced today that it's going to invest $1.5B into IoT research and ventures over the next four years. Half of the money will go toward internal efforts in Silicon Valley, but the other $750 million is being earmarked for acquisitions and startups. The Wall Street Journal points out that the investment -- a small part of Samsung's annual R&D budget of $14.1B -- … [Read more...]
AR Visor Maker Lumus Scores $15M Funding at $300M Valuation
The Israeli AR visor startup Lumus has closed a $15M funding round from two Chinese companies. We met with Lumus earlier this year, at CES, and were impressed by its technology. The binocular visor -- more like an Epson Moverio than a Vuzix M-300 -- uses optical waveguide technology and is therefore comparatively thin and lightweight. What was particularly impressive, … [Read more...]
New Bluetooth Boosts Range, Ends Pairing Process [UPDATED]
The Bluetooth SIG, the engineering group that controls the Bluetooth standard, today introduced Bluetooth 5, which the group says quadruples Bluetooth's previous range and doubles its speed. More than that, though, an 8-fold increase in Bluetooth 5's data capacity will put an end to the intrusive pairing process that Bluetooth's users are all too familiar with. The SIG says … [Read more...]
Intel Quits Work on Wireless Power
Intel has stopped work on cordless charging, pulling its employees out of leadership positions in the Qualcomm-backed AirFuel Alliance, Forbes reports. It's been a very long time since Forbes was a reliable source of deep tech reporting, but this piece by Elise Ackerman is a remarkable exception. Ackerman gets very geeky not only about the considerable politics around … [Read more...]
Aricent Announces Kids’ Wearable Platform Based On Snapdragon Wear 1100 Chip
Yesterday, we had news that Qualcomm introduced a low-function chip for simple wearables. Today, we're seeing news about how it'll be used. Aricent announced at the big Computex show the ADAPT wearables platform for children, a reference design that will help companies quickly build products around Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear 1100 chip. That chip includes motion detectors as … [Read more...]
LG’s Untethered Android Wear Smart Watch is Pretty Rough, Says The Verge
The road to market for LG Watch Urbane Second Edition LTE has been as long and rocky as the product's name itself. The first Android Wear watch to be able to operate untethered from a mobile phone, it was supposed to ship at the end of last year but was held back for unspecfied technical problems. Now that it's out, The Verge has a review, and it's less than wildly … [Read more...]
Qualcomm Launches Purpose-Built Snapdragon Wear Chips
At Mobile World Congress a few months ago, Pankaj Kedia, Qualcomm's top exec for its wearables business, told us we should expect the company to ship many different variants on a single platform. Qualcomm is starting to pay off on that strategy, launching the Snapdragon Wear 1100 processor at the big Computex conference this week. The Wear 1100, Kedia told VentureBeat, is … [Read more...]
Reports have Jawbone Either Pivoting or Circling the Drain
Something's up with Jawbone. The wearables/Bluetooth speaker/earbud maker was in the news today, and not in a good way. TechInsider reports that the company, which raised $165 million in a down round a few months ago, has stopped producing its UP2, UP3, and UP4 fitness trackers, selling existing inventory to liquidators. And Fortune says that Jawbone is exiting the Bluetooth … [Read more...]
Pebble Updates Watches with Heart Rate Monitors
Pebble, the smartwatch pioneer, today announced big updates to its basic model and its more deluxe Time product. Both get design updates -- the Pebble 2 is thinner and the Time 2 gets a bigger and higher-res color screen -- but the big change is the addition of a heart rate monitor. Even given Pebble's roots as a notification device, the addition of the heart rate … [Read more...]