Now that Tim Cook has effectively paved the way – without saying so – for Apple to create wearable devices in the near or distant future, the appearance of a so-called “curved battery” in the US Patent office isn’t all that much of a surprise. While it’s not a guarantee of any bit or piece
The company E Ink offers a variety of electronic paper displays in many different sizes, some of them flexible. As smartwatches, such as the well-known Pebble and its various competitors, gain in popularity, E Ink has announced a new 1.73-inch e-paper display that it is aimed specifically for them. The display is flexible, and will be first available in Sonostar Smartwatch.
Later this week, the Sonostar Smartwatch will be unveiled at Computex, and was developed in part by Transmart, a subsidiary of E Ink. The display will find its way into other smartwatches in the future, though if other devices are slated to get it, they haven’t been announced yet. Says E Ink, the display was made specifically for both watch and smartwatch apps.
E Ink’s Director of Product Management, Giovanni Mancini, said: “The joint development between Sonostar and Transmart is the perfect example of the how E Ink can help its customers get their product to market. E Ink displays enable unique products that capture the customer’s imagination. Our business development team has the expertise to help our customers design the displays into their products in ways never before thought possible.”
The 1.73-inch display is now available in the company’s Mobius line, and based off of E Ink-developed flexible TFT technologies. The display doesn’t do color, instead offering 16 levels of greyscale. The resolution is good for a smartwatch, coming in at 320 x 240 pixels. Like other electronic paper displays, it can be read in sunlight.
E Ink boasts that the flexible nature of the small display better enables it to conform to the shape of the wearer’s wrist, making room for more design options, as well. One of the design options includes the ability to cut the display into whatever shape is needed. Finally, the 1.73-inch e-paper display also requires little power, something necessary due to the small batteries in smartwatches.
E Ink unveils 1.73-inch flexible e-paper smartwatch display is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Although smartwatch makers have had access to e-paper for a while, there have been few such displays tailor-made for our wrists. E Ink is more than willing to fill that void with a new, watch-oriented version of its Mobius screen. The flexible, 1.73-inch panel won’t floor anyone with its 320 x 240 grayscale picture, but it can be cut into timepiece-friendly shapes that take more abuse than a typical e-reader. More importantly for us end users, E Ink already has at least one hardware partner lined up: Sonostar is using the tiny Mobius for a smartwatch this summer, and the odds are that the company won’t be alone.
Filed under: Peripherals, Wearables
Pebble’s smartwatch might have launched with limited capabilities, but the list of things it can do keeps growing. Now that the company has released firmware version 1.11, you can add a few more features to that list. The update brings notification and set time UI changes, multiple notification viewing, the wearer’s current speed measured by RunKeeper, swaps the music app’s next and previous buttons and squashes a few bugs. It also installs the Simplicity watchface on the device that’s sure to make minimalists happy. Sadly, there’s nary a hint of a new game in sight so you’ll have to make do with Tetris and Snake whenever the mood for smartwatch gaming strikes. To get version 1.11, launch your Pebble smartphone app and tap “check for FW update.”
David Fishman contributed to this report.
Gallery: Pebble Version 1.11.0
Source: Pebble
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
There are few gadgets more associated with crowdfunding than smartwatches, due largely to the millions raised by Pebble. Now, you can add one more competing for your attention (and your backing). A Kickstarter campaign for the Agent smartwatch kicked off today, promising to deliver a device with better battery life than its competitors and a developer-friendly environment to attract some all-important apps (it’s using the .NET Micro Framework, with apps able to be written in in C# using Visual Studio 2012).
As for the watch itself, it packs a 1.28-inch memory display with anti-glare glass, an ARM Cortex-M4 processor (which promises to help on the power-consumption front), Qi wireless charging, motion and light sensors, and a water-resistent design with replaceable wrist straps. If all goes as planned, the company intends to begin full production of the watch in December of this year, with the final MSRP running $249 (or $299 including a Qi charger). Some of the Kickstarter options will get you one for less than that, although many of those have already been claimed.
Filed under: Wearables
Source: Agent, Kickstarter, Atmel
The Pebble is arguably the most popular smartwatch to come out of Kickstarter, but it certainly isn’t the last, and now it has a competitor. The AGENT smartwatch is a square watch similar in appearance to the aforementioned device, and it has already reached its funding goal of $100,000, exceeding it by about 30-percent, with
For those early adopters who opted in for the Pebble smartwatch during its Kickstarter days, you’ll be pleased to know that compatible mobile apps will soon be able to communicate with the Pebble both ways, whereas apps used to only send information to the watch and you couldn’t send commands to your phone from the Pebble, which was one of the big caveats.
Pebble has issued an update to their PebbleKit SDK that will allow app developers to create and update their apps to support two-way communication with the Pebble watch over Bluetooth. Of course, this is huge for Pebble, as well as the app developers and the users who own a Pebble watch. Now they’ll be able to perform actions through the watch and have them sent to your smartphone.
Also being released today is the Pebble Sports API, which will allow third-party fitness apps to connect to Pebble smartwatches to offer certain data on the watch face, including time, pace, and miles. RunKeeper announced support last week, but Pebble is making the new API available for everyone, so we should be seeing a lot more fitness apps with Pebble support pop up in the near future.
In related Pebble news, the company is now beginning to ship their orange-colored watches to Kickstarter backers who have requested them. The company also completed development for grey and white models, but they have yet to make it into full production still, so it seems some Pebble backers will be waiting just a little while longer.
Also, after raising over $10 million in the Kickstarter campaign alone, Pebble is getting another round of funding, this time for a cool $15 million from Charles River Ventures. This means that we’ll see the Pebble team expand, and this really only marks the beginning for the company, which we expect to hear from in the next few years about new products and updates.
VIA: Engadget
SOURCE: Pebble
Pebble SDK update brings two-way communication to mobile apps is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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