Intel is working on a smartwatch, the company’s chief technology officer has confirmed, though there’s no hint whether long-standing rumors of an Apple collaboration are true. The high-tech timepiece is one of a range of “experimental devices in the lab” CTO Justin Rattner explained this week, VentureBeat reports, describing it as part of the chip
There a handful of watches out there that do a lot of nifty things besides tell the time and date, but it’s hard to say they’re actually worthy of the smartwatch name. Pebble is the most popular option, but it still lacks a lot of vital features that smartwatch entusiasts really want. However, a new
Nowadays, we can’t help but be skeptical of products that claim to be a smartwatch. In fact, what is a smartwatch, anyway? Perhaps GEAK, a Shanghai-based subsidiary of content giant Shanda, has a somewhat convincing answer. Simply dubbed the GEAK Watch, this wearable device packs a surprising number of components, with the most notable one being the 802.11b/g/n WiFi module. This lets the Android 4.1 system download apps directly or even receive OTA updates, but you can also create a wireless ad hoc network to do instant messaging with fellow users nearby — the watch can apparently do voice-to-text input. There’s also Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC for device pairing, along with GPS and FM radio — yes, there’s a headphone jack, too.
In terms of sensory features, the GEAK Watch offers to monitor the user’s sleeping pattern, pulse, blood pressure, body temperature, mood and number of steps walked. The components that take care of all these are somehow tucked into the 8mm-thick body of the watch, with the brain being the rare 1GHz Ingenic JZ4774 that’s based on MIPS architecture. The chip’s accompanied by 512MB of RAM, 4GB of storage and a suspiciously minuscule 500mAh lithium polymer cell — no word on the battery life just yet, though. There’s a 1.55-inch, 240 x 240 multi-touch OGS display to seal the device, and overall the watch is certified for a reasonable IPX3 water resistance.
Honestly, this smartwatch sounds too good to be true, and it’s only priced at just ¥1,999 or about $330. It’ll be up for pre-ordering in China from July 3rd, so it shouldn’t be long before we find out if the GEAK Watch is worthy of the “world’s first true smartwatch” title.
Filed under: Wearables
Via: Engadget Chinese
Source: GEAK (Chinese)
Acer is planning to add a wearable device to its range, but would-be owners shouldn’t expect to see anything go on sale until 2014 at the earliest, the company’s smartphone chief has confirmed. “We are looking at wearable” ST Liew, president of Acer’s smartphone business group, told Pocket-lint, but argued that industry attempts so far
Starting today, advanced developers can fiddle with Sony’s SmartWatch with more freedom than ever before. With the Open SmartWatch project, the company is now allowing devs to create and flash their own firmware to the device, paving the way for greater exploration of its potential. Previously, third-party innovation was limited to the official Add-on SDK, but with a slew of resources posted on the project’s website, Sony is looking to lure devs to its platform — and potentially find inspiration for its own end user experience. To get the party started, Sony and Arduino are teaming up to host a hackathon in Malmö, Sweden on June 15th with the hopes of bringing firmware alternatives to the table. Of course, flashing the firmware will void the product’s warranty, but for the developer with an eye on wearable tech, it might be a price well worth paying.
Source: Open SmartWatch Project, Sony
Back during the heady days of 2012, before the Pebble raised a crazy amount of money on Kickstarter, Sony quietly released an Android-compatible smartwatch of its own. By most accounts it wasn’t very good, but that doesn’t mean that Sony has relegated it to the trash pile.
No, with hindsight being what it is, Sony is looking to breathe some new life into that curious little gadget with some help from the developer community. The company has kicked off what it calls the Open SmartWatch program to get developers cooking up custom firmwares for the thing.
In case you haven’t been keeping tabs on the wearable gadgetry space, Sony launched the SmartWatch in question last year to mixed reviews. The concept is a very familiar one — the watch syncs to an Android-powered smartphone and displays messages and notifications, as well as runs a slew of bespoke SmartWatch apps. Thanks to its Android underpinnings, you could easily think of it as a more robust version of the Pebble or any of the copycats that have sprung up in its wake.
As iffy as Sony’s second-gen SmartWatch was, most of the issues seemed to be rooted in its software (and to its credit, Sony keeps pushing out patches and updates for the thing). Sony’s is one of the prettier smartwatches out there, and the spec list has just enough oomph to make it an attractive choice for some frenzied late night tinkering. By stripping out Sony’s work and starting fresh, hackers are largely left with a blank slate, and the company is committed to highlighting some of the most novel firmware once they start popping up.
To help kick this whole thing off, Sony has also tapped Arduino to hold a hackathon in Malmo, Sweden, to get antsy developers more familiar with the SmartWatch and what it’s capable of. There is, as always, a caveat: you may be breaking new ground with a device that most people haven’t given a second thought to, but you’ll be giving up access to the nearly 200 or so compatible applications floating around in the Google Play store.
Sony has thrown open its SmartWatch to support alternative firmware, with the company hoping the Open SmartWatch Project will kickstart wearable development and maybe even give it a few new ideas itself. The new scheme – which, unsurprisingly, voids your SmartWatch warranty – allows coders to access the wearable’s hardware in new and unusual ways,
Earlier this week, E Ink announced its Mobius flexible display, a 1.73-inch touch-enabled panel for smartwatches. Now, the new screen has made its way onto the Computex exhibition floor in Taipei. Sonostar, a local manufacturer, has integrated the 320 x 240 grayscale panel within its new wearable, which the company is demonstrating for show attendees. Simply called “Smartwatch,” the product is little more than a mockup at this point, but it is expected to hit production sometime in Q3 of this year.
The two samples on hand were non-functional, unfortunately, but they did each contain a working Mobius panel — one displayed a sample Facebook notification, while the second had the time and date with a small low-res picture of a dog, along with battery and Bluetooth indicators up top. The watch itself was very lightweight, and while glare was clearly an issue today, there’s plenty of time for engineers to tweak things before this ships later in the year. The Smartwatch, which can stay powered for up to a week with each charge, will come in both black and white, and should be compatible with both Android and iOS devices. Pricing is not yet set, but representatives did confirm that it’ll be coming to the US.
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