We're all for greater adoption of technology in sports, but as New Yorkers with a bit of a "thing" about Boston and cheating, we report this with satisfaction: The Red Sox have been caught using Apple Watches to relay stolen signs to their batters. On the one hand, yay for a new business use case for wearables. On the other hand, those sumbitches were cheating. On the third … [Read more...]
Fossil Debuts Two Android Wear Smartwatches
There's been no lack of activity in wearables at Berlin's IFA consumer electronics show, but Android Wear was notably absent until Fossil unveiled two new devices with their first full-round screens. The Fossil Q Venture and Q Explorist have always-on AMOLED touchscreens -- 42 mm for the Venture and 44 mm for the Explorist. They're both based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 1200 … [Read more...]
Intel (Finally) Ditches Wearables for AR
Once upon a time, Intel wanted to establish itself as the go-to chipmaker for wearables. What's more, the company bought the pioneering fitness band company Basis -- its first consumer-facing business in a very long time. Now comes word that Intel has finally and officially killed its wearables business. In truth, it was a long time coming. Intel rarely talks about internal … [Read more...]
Don’t Believe Everything You Read: Wearables Are Far From Dead
You could get whiplash from reading the general tech press about wearables. Engadget looks at the collapse of Jawbone and decides that wearables are over. Steve Levy at Wired is fed a story about Google Glass Enterprise and writes that wearables' future is in the factory. Faithful readers of Wearable Tech Insider know that the real deal is a bit more nuanced. Jawbone, as … [Read more...]
Rings: How Smart Can They Be?
A couple of years back, smart rings looked like they might be the coming thing. We checked out the Neyya ring from India, London-based Kerv, and there were even rumors of an elusive Apple iRing. And while none of them—with the possible exception of the iRing—seems to have had an appointment with Mount Doom, consumer response was and remains underwhelming. Into this … [Read more...]
Apple Joins Wireless Power Consortium, but Don’t Jump to iPhone Conclusions
9to5Mac noticed today that Apple has joined the Wireless Power Consortium, which controls the Qi standard, and promptly jumped to the conclusion that the next iPhone will feature wireless charging. We're not all that interested in iPhones around here -- at least, not to cover them -- but there may be both more and less here than meets the eye. The Apple Watch uses inductive … [Read more...]
EZ Tags for Humans in Transit
Anyone whose commute involves a toll road will attest to the convenience of EZ tags that let your car whip through the toll areas without stopping—or in some places, even slowing down. Garmin and the Chinese company Watchdata Technologies, in conjunction with EZ-Link, have come to the rescue of the footsore in Singapore by adding am NFC chip to their fitness trackers. The … [Read more...]
Misfit Moves to Full Display, Away from Intel/Google: CES
Misfit, one of the grand old brands in consumer wearables, had a couple of surprises at CES; one obvious, the other less so. The obvious one was the unveiling of its Vapor smartwatch, which abandons Misfit's signature design language. From the first, Misfits trackers have been small aluminum disks (or later, tubes) with only subtle LEDs as indicators and year-long battery … [Read more...]
Is a Fitbit Smartwatch Coming? Sure Looks Like It: CES
There was nothing explicit about Ftbit's plans at CES, but the dots were there to connect. Fitbit CEO James Park told The Verge at the conference that his company was building an app store, like the one for Pebble, the assets of which Fitbit bought a month earlier. The thing about Fitbit's product line is that there's no product for apps to run on, so Park's comment was … [Read more...]
How Accurate Are Walking Trackers? A Report from CES 2017
For the last few CES shows, we've been strapping on as many fitness trackers as would fit on our wrists, hitting the floors and conference rooms, and comparing results. We don't expect accuracy -- we don't do a manual count of steps -- but we hope for a degree of consistency. When we first did this three years ago, trackers showed error of more than 35 percent, which meant the … [Read more...]