We've written about graphene before: single-atom layers of carbon arranged in a lattice. Graphene has interesting and still-unexplored properties, and one group of scientists think it can be useful as a supercapacitor (which we've also written about before). A flexible supercapacitor would be very interesting indeed for wearables, all the more if it were made out of a stable … [Read more...]
Panasonic Intros Pin-Sized Battery for Wearables
Don't count on driving your phone with it, but Panasonic is introducing a tiny battery that produces 13mAh at 3.75 volts. The LiIon CG-320 battery is 20 mm long and 3.5 mm in diameter -- about 1/20 of the size of a AAA cell. An iPhone 6 battery holds 1800 mAh; a Jawbone Up24 requires 32mAh. Panasonic says they're developing other, slightly larger, batteries with a capacity … [Read more...]
Stupid Smartwatch Tricks: Windows 95
There's not a whole lot to say about this, but here it is: a Samsung Gear Live smartwatch, based on Android Wear, running Windows 95. Barely. Come back in a year, and some watch will be able to run it handily, without maxing out on memory. But we still won't know why anyone would want to... https://youtu.be/GZx-LJH5J_I … [Read more...]
High-Tech Clothing Purifies the Air Around You
When we talk to people in the fashion industry (which, us being in New York, is pretty frequently), we often issue a challenge: for all of history, clothing has been about decoration and protection. What can technology do that will either enhance those functions or add another? Here's one answer: clothing that can clean the air around its wearers. Pollution is a big … [Read more...]
Nixie Wearable Drone is an Intel Finalist
We've been writing off and on about the Intel "Make It Wearable" development competition. The company's announced 10 finalists, and although all of them are pretty cool, the Nixie wearable drone is just off the gotta-have-it charts. Understand that the Nixie is not a product; it's a development prototype. You can't buy it, and probably the only place you can see it is in … [Read more...]
Juniper Report Says Big Wearables Companies Are Moving Past the Device to the Ecosystem
Juniper Research's latest smart devices report is out, and it suggests that fitness trackers are becoming so commoditized that the larger companies are worried more about the software than the hardware. The company's third report on wearables expects that 116 million smart wearables will be sold in 2017, five times the 27 million estimated for this year. Still, that's only … [Read more...]
TAG Heuer Thinks That Maybe Wearables Are An OK Idea After All
Swiss watchmakers have this love/hate relationship with wearable tech. They pretty unanimously dismissed it. Now they're coming around, possibly spurred by Apple's hiring away Patrick Pruniaux, TAG Heuer's VP of sales. Now, the head of LMVH's watch business Jean-Claude Biver, says TAG Heuer is interested in making a wearable device, but that it mustn't copy the Apple … [Read more...]
Crowdfunding Wearables Isn’t a Good Way to VC’s Hearts, Techcrunch Finds
There are been some extraordinarily successful crowdfunded wearable projects, it's true. Pebble and Omate are famous for raising more than $1 million each and going on to commercial success. But an analysis on TechCrunch indicates that only 23 percent of venture-funded wearables companies got their start in crowdfunding -- and only 19 wearables companies that crowd-raised more … [Read more...]
Wearable Tech at NY Fashion Week: Couture and the Maker Ethic
We somehow managed to miss/ignore New York Fashion Week, but there were apparently some interesting designs there related to wearable tech. Stylite's got a pretty good roundup. CuteCircuit had a nice collection, and Stylite makes a cool point about the sort of LED-laden designs that they make: the displays on electronic clothing could easily reside in an app store. The clothing … [Read more...]
What the Apple Watch Rumor Mill Got Wrong
There was so much virtual ink spilled about the Apple Watch that it's interesting to see what people got wrong. (We're not calling anyone in particular out -- mostly because it's just so damned hard to figure out where which rumor started....) There are plenty of features that no one wrote about ahead of time, but this is about what was written about that didn't work out. 1. … [Read more...]