Category: Smartwatches/Bands

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Smartwatches/Bands

Trivoly slips under your watch to make it a smarter partner

Although smartwatches offer all sorts of conveniences, the problem with them is that most people already own watches and most of the time, they like their own watches more than whatever Apple, Google, or Pebble is offering.

The team behind the Trivoly recognizes that watches are timeless and well-designed in and of themselves, so it decided to smarten them up rather than make a watch that tried to compete. The Trivoly is a thin disc that adds connected capabilities to any watch. It’s small enough to fit under pretty much any timepiece, offering users vibration alerts for notifications, fitness tracking capabilities, tap-controlled music control, a camera function, and a general interface with which to stay connected with apps like Uber.

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Smartwatches/Bands

This modular smartwatch and band will make you the coolest kid on the Blocks

editors-choiceSmartwatches are a paradox. They extend some of the capabilities of the smartphone by putting notifications and other functionality on the wrist but they also have serious limitations because of their size (including their puny batteries), comfort requirements, and limited input. They require even more functional tradeoffs than smartphones and unfortunately that may include things important to certain buyers

But there will be a far smaller chance of that for owners of the Blocks smartwatch. The “core” of the device includes a sleek round LCD watch face that provides features such as voice input, haptic feedback, low-power Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, notifications and activity tracking. It works with both iOS and Android smartphones.

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Reviews Smartwatches/Bands

Pebble Time review

Backerjack is delighted to start off its hands-on reviews with a product that set the Kickstarter record for funding, the Pebble Time.

Review Score: 3 of 5

The original Pebble watch was notable for two reasons. It was one of the first smartwatches to work with both iOS in addition to Android and it was one of the few to have a grayscale e-paper display that offered long battery life and great outdoor readability. Handling smartwatch basics such as phone call notification, step counting and music playback control, the Pebble attracted thousands of watchfaces and apps. However, the watch looked plastic and chunky (a fault somewhat rectified by the Pebble Steel) and its interface often  required an extended number of button presses given its lack of a touchscreen.

The Pebble Time addresses some of the shortcomings of the original. it has a sleeker, more attractive two-tone design that drops the body extensions to accommodate the strap. Pebble has also gone with a color e-ink display, one of the first to be used in a consumer product. Pebble has also moved its power connector from the side of the device to the back and seems to have strengthened the magnets; the connection is more secure and Pebble now ships a long flat cable. And while the power connector also supports watch straps that add functionality (a promising one the subject of a recent crowdfunding campaign), they’ve not appeared in the market yet. Like its predecessor, the Pebble Time is water-resistant.

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Smartwatches/Bands

Back to the Backers: Blu wearable smartphone

Since the advent of the iPhone, smartphones have all generally become the same rectangular slabs of glass and plastic we’ve all come to know, love, and obsess over. So when Blu jumped on the scene this past March with its concept for a hybrid wearable smartphone concept, its innovative design definitely garnered attention — although not enough to raise the close to $500,000 necessary to fund it. Now, Blu is back with another Indiegogo campaign and this time its goal is even loftier, aiming for a cool $1,000,000 in an all-or-nothing fixed funding campaign. That goal will cover the development of the product’s many flexible components, from its F-OLED display, circuit board, and larger capacity 4200mAH battery.

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Input Smartwatches/Bands

Aria lets you gesture toward your smartphone, offers hands-free control

As advanced as the smartwatches on the market now are, their small screens and tiny buttons don’t necessarily make for the most engaging user experiences. Half the time, they end up adding layers of complexity rather than the opposite, creating opportunities for companies like Deus Ex Technology Ltd to cook up new ways to leverage the benefits these devices give us in a more useful way.

Their solution is their Bluetooth-enabled Aria wearable, a gesture control interface that lets both Android Wear and Pebble Time owners use their devices with only finger gestures. Whether it be a flick of the index finger or a tap of the ring finger, these gestures are fully customizable so that actions, like opening emails or taking calls, are simple to execute. Aria does all this by using sensors to remember which tendons flex with each respective finger movement, assigning commands to each when performed.

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Health and Wellness Relaxation Smartwatches/Bands

Doppel calms you down, revs you up with a buzz to the wrist

From Five Hour Energy to ZzzQuil, there are  no shortages of substances legal, regulated and outright banned to help us mentally speed up or slow down. Unfortunately, virtually all of them include chemicals that have some kind of side effect and they’re often difficult to gain access to in the moment they’re most needed.

That’s not so for doppel, a round wrist-worn device that might pass for a mechanical watch at first glance. Indeed, unlike digital watches that have few or no moving parts, doppel is designed to generate movement. Rather than using gears to tell the time, though, the product generates a rhythmic buzzing designed to produce a calming or energizing pattern of buzzes on the inside if your wrist. The principle is the same as using music to calm one down or pump one up. Doppel’s battery will do so for five to 10 hours. The standard stainless steel doppel goes for about £85 (about $127) and should be ready in March 2016. Turquoise, the group behind doppel, seeks $155,412 by July 16th.

Assuming it works, which Turquise does not prove conclusively, doppel makes a strong case to be the connected thing one should have on the other wrist assuming one wears a watch (smart or traditional). The product has more potential than other wrist gear that simply indicates stress levels, handing off the calming tasks to an app. The company would have a stronger case if it relied on biofeedback like the HeartMath Inner Body Sensor that completes the feedback loop using one’s breathing.

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Smartwatches/Bands

PureWrist band purifies payments of filthy money

With Apple’s ApplePay having made the splash it has, and Google nipping at its heels with Android Pay, the contactless payment arena is a crowded battleground. It may seem like there’s little reason to try to create alternatives considering how widely adopted both systems have the chance to be.

But that’s not stopping newcomer PureWrist from introducing their own. The bracelet takes a more traditional approach to contactless payment, incorporating the Gratitude prepaid debit card within its stylish, water resistant, silicone construction. Supported by the MasterCard network, the Gratitude uses an embedded antenna that lets users connect their own bank or PayPal accounts and pay with their bracelets at those increasingly common payment points everywhere.

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Smartwatches/Bands

Cogito Fit takes on geeky smartwatch competitors with style, simplicity and savings

Think wearables and the smartwatch inevitably springs to mind. With us firmly in the age of the Apple Watch, entrenched stalwarts like the Moto 360 and the Pebble are fighting to stay within the public eye through innovative offerings and novel form factors. All this going on doesn’t mean new ideas can’t spring up, though.

The Cogito Fit attempts to tack on a bit more functionality to a basic smartwatch without resorting to daily charging . Billing itself as the first fashion-forward connected watch on the market, the device not only looks good but also addresses a few limitations of high-end devices. Cogito offers a face with LED icons for basic notifications, straps in a few colors, and a bezel that can be swapped depending on preference.

Feature wise, the Cogito Fit functions like most other smartwatches in its notification capabilities, and when its done alerting someone to what e-mails, SMS, calls, and social media updates they have, a light activity tracker also tracks steps.

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Smartwatches/Bands

ReVault uses wireless storage to back up your smartphone, keep stuff close at hand

Day in and day out, the smartphone does a lot for the smartwatch, but what does the smartwach do to help the smartphone? As it turns out, one thing it can do is help back it up.

What sets the ReVault smartwatch apart from its rivals is its ability to back up devices wirelessly. The device enables users to securely access and sync their files across all devices without an Internet connection. It connects to other devices using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Users can set up ReVault to auto-backup and auto-synchronize files across their devices. A 32-GB version will cost $269, while a 128-GB model will cost $404 when ReVault ships in January.

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Smartwatches/Bands Sports

Pulse Play wearable for racket sports keeps score, doesn’t do much else

Racket ball sports such as tennis, badminton, squash and pingpong delight upper-crust players around the globe. Pulse Play is a wearable used for just such sports. Worn on the wrist, this product monitors each match and records data to an accompanying app via Bluetooth. It keeps and announces the score, remembers the stats of each match, ranks players, and can even match players up with those near them who match their playing level. The wristband comes in a rainbow of colors and is made of lightweight material perfect for working up a sweat in.

Pulse Play only really seems mildly useful. Yes, it keeps score, but the data it provides won’t help one improve their game and it’s doubtful that many are interested in being matched up with other strange players. People only want to meet strangers with the help of an app if they’re going to hook up. Perhaps if the wearable pushed a bit further and provided feedback on speed and swing, like the Arcus fitness wearable, it would enjoy some success.

Still, interested backers can have one of their own for a donation of $75 for delivery in October 2015. Pulse Play’s Indiegogo campaign has a fundraising goal of $75,000.