The Samsung Gear was one of the most derided pieces of wearable tech of 2013. So the Korean tech giant went back to the drawing board with the wristwear and revised it to be pretty much more of the same. We need to say this up front: we haven't clapped eyes or even hands on the Gear 2 or the more plastic Gear 2 Neo. It was introduced Sunday in the run-up to Mobile World … [Read more...]
Intel’s Edison Can Do Local Voice Processing, No Cloud Required
Though it's fun to play Stupid Siri Tricks on the iPhone (we had loads of laughs asking it about the movie "Her"), there's one bit problem with it: Siri needs a network connection. It calls home to process your questions. No connectivity, no Siri. Intel's Project Edison wearable platform apparently has no such limitation. Quartz, the excellent news site from The Atlantic, … [Read more...]
Google ships Android 4.4 KitKat; Small Footprint Could Aid Wearables
Google has shipped version 4.4 of its Android operating system; it refers to it as KitKat. (Google names Android versions after sweets, in alphabetical order.) There's lots of discussion about what, exactly, this means for wearables. One stated goal of KitKat is to reduce the size of the OS so it will run on older Android devices. Fragmentation has become a big problem for … [Read more...]
WSJ: Google’s Getting Close to the Watch Business
The Wall Street Journal is citing sources that say that Google is in "late-stage talks" with suppliers to build a watch, and could begin production "within months." The watch would run Android (no surprise there) and be based around Google Now, the intelligent assistant that appears on some Android tablets. Reliance on Google Now would require access to things like a user's … [Read more...]
Samsung Gear To Play Well With More Tablets
One of the biggest raps, among the many, against the Samsung Gear smartwatch is that it's an add-on device that would only work with one Samsung tablet. Samsung's now fixing that -- a little -- by expanding the roster of devices. When the Samsung Galaxy S4,S III and Note II get their updates to Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean), the company says they'll be able to work with the Gear. … [Read more...]