Hasta La Gadget!

A dramatic 200 percent increase in postbirth conditions like sepsis has disproportionately affected women of color.

The smartwatch world has certainly come a long way since it the idea of it was conceived in the previous century. The Pebble smartwatch really kicked things off big time, but discontinued a couple of years ago as the company ran into turbulent times. While a smartwatch does boast of an array of features and functionality, there is one major drawback: the battery life. This is where the niche of a hybrid smartwatch was born, and the NOWA hybrid smartwatch from France would prove to be a classy addition onto virtually any wrist.

Design
The best word to describe the NOWA hybrid smartwatch would be “minimalist” in nature. Boasting of a pure matte white dial that clearly shows off indigo blue hands and matte black indices, the entire face tells the time effortlessly at a single glance. Natural steel is used to form both the case and clasp, sporting a glossy finish for that cultured look. The strap itself is flat, and depending on the color that suits your taste, a beige lining accompanies it. NOWA has a slew of different straps for you to choose from, allowing you to own a collection that will suit your wardrobe according to the event of the day.

To put it simply, the NOWA hybrid smartwatch is a classically designed watch that finds it place in the boardroom and at the office as opposed to those who are looking for an adrenaline pumping adventure outdoors. The 3 ATM water resistance rating (up to 30 meters) means you do not have to worry about getting soaked under a sudden downpour, but I would not recommend wearing it to the swimming pool or when you go snorkelling or head out to the woods, since it was not advertised as being built tough.

On a personal note, the band does tend to stink up after a while, especially if you sweat profusely, but then again that is a common issue that affects virtually all watches. It makes perfect sense to give the NOWA hybrid smartwatch a clean from time to time in order to avoid such a situation.

Hardware
A single CR2025 battery will be able to power the NOWA hybrid smartwatch for approximately 8 months under normal usage conditions before a replacement is required. The case itself measures just 9.75mm thin, as it rests elegantly on your wrist without looking too bulky. It ditches a digital display for quartz movement, where the case boasts a scratch-proof glass that is made out of flat mineral with sapphire coating for additional scratch resistance.

The NOWA hybrid smartwatch will feature Bluetooth low energy connectivity as it connects to your smartphone. Once the handset is synchronized to it, it will show the local time regardless of which location you are at in the world. Of course, the NOWA app will have to be downloaded beforehand on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, depending on which mobile platform you using.

Setting up a connection between your smartphone and NOWA is painless, taking less than a couple of minutes to do so. Being different from a regular smartwatch, the NOWA will lack any kind of digital display, being completely analog in nature. A small ring in the top center segment of the watch’s face blinks in red when you push the dial on the right side of the case in order to indicate that it is connected to your smartphone’s app.

Performance
The NOWA hybrid smartwatch does help you keep track of your fitness goals, although I would not go so far as to recommend using this alone if you are serious about your exercise regime. Think of this as a backup, and if you want a dedicated fitness tracker, then it would be wiser to invest in one instead.

However, the NOWA timepiece is able to keep track of all daily activities, and these include recording the number of steps taken, distance covered and calories burned. Do take into consideration that all recorded data are mere estimates at best, so do leave some wiggle room for the final count. If you do not mind wearing watches to sleep, then the NOWA is also able to perform sleep monitoring as it keeps track of your sleep duration and quality (deep or light).

Both activity and sleep monitoring details can be checked on the NOWA app, enabling you to adjust your lifestyle accordingly. What makes the NOWA useful apart from telling the time for me would be the ability to reject pesky incoming calls from telemarketers and my least favorite relatives, to locate my phone, and to snap a selfie from a distance as long as it remains within Bluetooth range. This is done simply by pressing the dial or shaking my wrist.

Conclusion
The asking price of US$199 for the NOWA hybrid smartwatch might make it seem to be expensive, but each timepiece is individually numbered for that added touch of class. Remember, the context of the NOWA hybrid smartwatch is this: it is primarily a time telling device that looks elegant for business and formal events, and to have it come with the ability to keep track of your activity and sleep patterns are an added bonus. Not only that, with a battery that can last for more than half a year without having to look for a charger at the end of each day is certainly a point that is worth driving home. Those who want something tougher would do well to look for a more robust timepiece, such as the G-Shock watches from Casio.

Product Page
[ NOWA hybrid smartwatch review copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Frederick Gaston, 51, admitted to assaulting and raping a 26-year-old woman who was drunk and vomiting.

The smartwatch world has certainly come a long way since it the idea of it was conceived in the previous century. The Pebble smartwatch really kicked things off big time, but discontinued a couple of years ago as the company ran into turbulent times. While a smartwatch does boast of an array of features and functionality, there is one major drawback: the battery life. This is where the niche of a hybrid smartwatch was born, and the NOWA hybrid smartwatch from France would prove to be a classy addition onto virtually any wrist.

Design
The best word to describe the NOWA hybrid smartwatch would be “minimalist” in nature. Boasting of a pure matte white dial that clearly shows off indigo blue hands and matte black indices, the entire face tells the time effortlessly at a single glance. Natural steel is used to form both the case and clasp, sporting a glossy finish for that cultured look. The strap itself is flat, and depending on the color that suits your taste, a beige lining accompanies it. NOWA has a slew of different straps for you to choose from, allowing you to own a collection that will suit your wardrobe according to the event of the day.

To put it simply, the NOWA hybrid smartwatch is a classically designed watch that finds it place in the boardroom and at the office as opposed to those who are looking for an adrenaline pumping adventure outdoors. The 3 ATM water resistance rating (up to 30 meters) means you do not have to worry about getting soaked under a sudden downpour, but I would not recommend wearing it to the swimming pool or when you go snorkelling or head out to the woods, since it was not advertised as being built tough.

On a personal note, the band does tend to stink up after a while, especially if you sweat profusely, but then again that is a common issue that affects virtually all watches. It makes perfect sense to give the NOWA hybrid smartwatch a clean from time to time in order to avoid such a situation.

Hardware
A single CR2025 battery will be able to power the NOWA hybrid smartwatch for approximately 8 months under normal usage conditions before a replacement is required. The case itself measures just 9.75mm thin, as it rests elegantly on your wrist without looking too bulky. It ditches a digital display for quartz movement, where the case boasts a scratch-proof glass that is made out of flat mineral with sapphire coating for additional scratch resistance.

The NOWA hybrid smartwatch will feature Bluetooth low energy connectivity as it connects to your smartphone. Once the handset is synchronized to it, it will show the local time regardless of which location you are at in the world. Of course, the NOWA app will have to be downloaded beforehand on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, depending on which mobile platform you using.

Setting up a connection between your smartphone and NOWA is painless, taking less than a couple of minutes to do so. Being different from a regular smartwatch, the NOWA will lack any kind of digital display, being completely analog in nature. A small ring in the top center segment of the watch’s face blinks in red when you push the dial on the right side of the case in order to indicate that it is connected to your smartphone’s app.

Performance
The NOWA hybrid smartwatch does help you keep track of your fitness goals, although I would not go so far as to recommend using this alone if you are serious about your exercise regime. Think of this as a backup, and if you want a dedicated fitness tracker, then it would be wiser to invest in one instead.

However, the NOWA timepiece is able to keep track of all daily activities, and these include recording the number of steps taken, distance covered and calories burned. Do take into consideration that all recorded data are mere estimates at best, so do leave some wiggle room for the final count. If you do not mind wearing watches to sleep, then the NOWA is also able to perform sleep monitoring as it keeps track of your sleep duration and quality (deep or light).

Both activity and sleep monitoring details can be checked on the NOWA app, enabling you to adjust your lifestyle accordingly. What makes the NOWA useful apart from telling the time for me would be the ability to reject pesky incoming calls from telemarketers and my least favorite relatives, to locate my phone, and to snap a selfie from a distance as long as it remains within Bluetooth range. This is done simply by pressing the dial or shaking my wrist.

Conclusion
The asking price of US$199 for the NOWA hybrid smartwatch might make it seem to be expensive, but each timepiece is individually numbered for that added touch of class. Remember, the context of the NOWA hybrid smartwatch is this: it is primarily a time telling device that looks elegant for business and formal events, and to have it come with the ability to keep track of your activity and sleep patterns are an added bonus. Not only that, with a battery that can last for more than half a year without having to look for a charger at the end of each day is certainly a point that is worth driving home. Those who want something tougher would do well to look for a more robust timepiece, such as the G-Shock watches from Casio.

Product Page
[ NOWA hybrid smartwatch review copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

If any aliens or technology ingenues were trying to understand what on earth a ‘smart home’ is yesterday, via Google’s latest own-brand hardware launch event, they’d have come away with a pretty confused and incoherent picture.

The company’s presenters attempted to sketch a vision of gadget-enabled domestic bliss but the effect was rather closer to described clutter-bordering-on-chaos, with existing connected devices being blamed (by Google) for causing homeowners’ device usability and control headaches — which thus necessitated another new type of ‘hub’ device which was now being unveiled, slated and priced to fix problems of the smart home’s own making.

Meet the ‘Made by Google’ Home Hub.

Buy into the smart home, the smart consumer might think, and you’re going to be stuck shelling out again and again — just to keep on top of managing an ever-expanding gaggle of high maintenance devices.

Which does sound quite a lot like throwing good money after bad. Unless you’re a true believer in the concept of gadget-enabled push-button convenience — and the perpetually dangled claim that smart home nirvana really is just around the corner. One additional device at a time. Er, and thanks to AI!

Yesterday, at Google’s event, there didn’t seem to be any danger of nirvana though.

Not unless paying $150 for a small screen lodged inside a speaker is your idea of heaven. (i.e. after you’ve shelled out for all the other connected devices that will form the spokes chained to this control screen.)

A small tablet that, let us be clear, is defined by its limitations: No standard web browser, no camera… No, it’s not supposed to be an entertainment device in its own right.

It’s literally just supposed to sit there and be a visual control panel — with the usual also-accessible-on-any-connected-device type of content like traffic, weather and recipes. So $150 for a remote control doesn’t sound quite so cheap now does it?

The hub doubling as a digital photo frame when not in active use — which Google made much of — isn’t some kind of ‘magic pixie’ sales dust either. Call it screensaver 2.0.

A fridge also does much the same with a few magnets and bits of paper. Just add your own imagination.

During the presentation, Google made a point of stressing that the ‘evolving’ smart home it was showing wasn’t just about iterating on the hardware front — claiming its Google’s AI software is hard at work in the background, hand-in-glove with all these devices, to really ‘drive the vision forward’.

But if the best example it can find to talk up is AI auto-picking which photos to display on a digital photo frame — at the same time as asking consumers to shell out $150 for a discrete control hub to manually manage all this IoT — that seems, well, underwhelming to say the least. If not downright contradictory.

Google also made a point of referencing concerns it said it’s heard from a large majority of users that they’re feeling overwhelmed by too much technology, saying: “We want to make sure you’re in control of your digital well-being.”

Yet it said this at an event where it literally unboxed yet another clutch of connected, demanding, function-duplicating devices — that are also still, let’s be clear, just as hungry for your data — including the aforementioned tablet-faced speaker (which Google somehow tried to claim would help people “disconnect” from all their smart home tech — so, basically, ‘buy this device so you can use devices less’… ); a ChromeOS tablet that transforms into a laptop via a snap-on keyboard; and 2x versions of its new high end smartphone, the Pixel 3.

There was even a wireless charging Pixel Stand that props the phone up in a hub-style control position. (Oh and Google didn’t even have time to mention it during the cluttered presentation but there’s this Disney co-branded Mickey Mouse-eared speaker for kids, presumably).

What’s the average consumer supposed to make of all this incestuously overlapping, wallet-badgering hardware?!

Smartphones at least have clarity of purpose — by being efficiently multi-purposed.

Increasingly powerful all-in-ones that let you do more with less and don’t even require you to buy a new one every year vs the smart home’s increasingly high maintenance and expensive (in money and attention terms) sprawl, duplication and clutter. And that’s without even considering the security risks and privacy nightmare.

The two technology concepts really couldn’t be further apart.

If you value both your time and your money the smartphone is the one — the only one — to buy into.

Whereas the smart home clearly needs A LOT of finessing — if it’s to ever live up to the hyped claims of ‘seamless convenience’.

Or, well, a total rebranding.

The ‘creatively chaotic & experimental gadget lovers’ home would be a more honest and realistic sell for now — and the foreseeable future.

Instead Google made a pitch for what it dubbed the “thoughtful home”. Even as it pushed a button to pull up a motorised pedestal on which stood clustered another bunch of charge-requiring electronics that no one really needs — in the hopes that consumers will nonetheless spend their time and money assimilating redundant devices into busy domestic routines. Or else find storage space in already overflowing drawers.

The various iterations of ‘smart’ in-home devices in the market illustrate exactly how experimental the entire  concept remains.

Just this week, Facebook waded in with a swivelling tablet stuck on a smart speaker topped with a camera which, frankly speaking, looks like something you’d find in a prison warden’s office.

Google, meanwhile, has housed speakers in all sorts of physical forms, quite a few of which resemble restroom scent dispensers — what could it be trying to distract people from noticing?

And Amazon now has so many Echo devices it’s almost impossible to keep up. It’s as if the ecommerce giant is just dropping stones down a well to see if it can make a splash.

During the smart home bits of Google’s own-brand hardware pitch, the company’s parade of presenters often sounded like they were going through robotic motions, failing to muster anything more than baseline enthusiasm.

And failing to dispel a strengthening sense that the smart home is almost pure marketing, and that sticking update-requiring, wired in and/or wireless devices with variously overlapping purposes all over the domestic place is the very last way to help technology-saturated consumers achieve anything close to ‘disconnected well-being’.

Incremental convenience might be possible, perhaps — depending on which and how few smart home devices you buy; for what specific purpose/s; and then likely only sporadically, until the next problematic update topples the careful interplay of kit and utility. But the idea that the smart home equals thoughtful domestic bliss for families seems farcical.

All this updatable hardware inevitably injects new responsibilities and complexities into home life, with the conjoined power to shift family dynamics and relationships — based on things like who has access to and control over devices (and any content generated); whose jobs it is to fix things and any problems caused when stuff inevitably goes wrong (e.g. a device breakdown OR an AI-generated snafu like the ‘wrong’ photo being auto-displayed in a communal area); and who will step up to own and resolve any disputes that arise as a result of all the Internet connected bits being increasingly intertwined in people’s lives, willingly or otherwise.

Hey Google, is there an AI to manage all that yet?