Best smartwatches and wearables of CES 2017: What to expect

The annual Consumer Electronics Show will likely be all about virtual reality and augmented reality and of course cars this year, but there will likely be a few surprises in store specifically for your wrist or some other part of your body.

That’s right. We’re talking about smartwatches and wearables. Now, keep in mind that Apple and Google — two of tech’s biggest players — don’t normally attend the show. There will be hundreds of Apple Watch apps and accessories on the floor, but no new Apple Watches. As for Google, it is planning to launch flagship Android Wear watches in 2017, but they’ll be branded by whatever company is manufacturing them.

While we don’t expect to see Google unveil watches in January, it has said other Android Wear partners will debut new devices running Android Wear 2.0 at CES 2017. But you should know there is a lot of criticism going around about existing smartwatches and fitness trackers. Some studies show they’re stuck in a rut. Because of that, don’t expect a lot in January in terms of new hardware.

In fact, we’ll probably see more advancements in the form of smart clothing or smart glasses. Companies are being quiet at the moment about what they have planned, so little is known about what we can expect from them in Vegas. 

• Best smartwatches and wearables of CES 2016

Fitbit

Pocket-lint

Fitbit is number one in the US in terms of wearable sales. The company has refreshed almost its entire portfolio over the course of the year, so we aren’t expecting much, but we could still see an update to the Fitbit Surge GPS smartwatch, which first released over two years ago. 

Fossil Group

Fossil

Fossil Group has confirmed that its brands, including Diesel, Fossil, Misfit, Michael Kors, Skagen and Emporio Armani will all unveil new wearables at CES 2017. Fossil also said there’ll be announcements from a brand that’s not currently in the wearables market.

Garmin

Pocket-lint

Garmin makes niche sports watches, and we could see a new one these devices appear in January. Garmin has announced new watches at CES in the past, such as the Fenix 3 multisport watch in 2015, followed by the Fenix 3 HR in 2016. Maybe we will see a Fenix 4 in 2017.

Samsung

Pocket-lint

Samsung will present at CES 2017, but don’t expect any new wearables. The company will likely focus on televisions, appliances, and the smart home instead, though it may also promote existing wearable products, such as the Gear Fit 2 and Gear S3.

LeEco

LeEco

LeEco recently launched in the US, and shortly after, CEO Jia Yueting took to Chinese social media site Weibo to confirm the company will be at CES 2017. Yueting’s post featured a number of LeEco products, but it was removed soon after. LeEco hasn’t said why.

Xiaomi

Xiaomi

Xiaomi has confirmed it will be at CES for the first time ever. Considering the broad range of products Xiaomi makes, there’s a strong possibility that a smartwatch or wearable of some type could be announced. However, it did just launch the Xiaomi Mi Band 2 this past summer.

Want to know more?

Check out Pocket-lint’s guide to learn more about CES, including what it is and when it is and what else you can expect to be announced.

Exoplanets may have carved dusty tracks around a young star

Astronomers have spotted what they believe are two Saturn-sized planets carving “tracks” through a young star’s protoplanetary disk. Although scientists have found plenty of exoplanets ranging from gas giants like Jupiter to rocky, Earth-like worlds, most orbit mature stars. However, the not-yet-fully-formed worlds imaged by the ALMA telescope array show that stars can possibly spawn planets at an earlier age than previously thought.

The ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) telescope has spotted plenty of young stars that still have protoplanetary disks, many with similar gaps that could mark the presence of planets (see the video below). “However, since we were only looking at dust in the disks with sufficient detail, we couldn’t be sure what created these features,” says lead author Andrea Isella.

This time, the team used ALMA to create a composite image showing both dust and carbon dioxide gas. The dust image revealed three gaps, one at 60 astronomical units (AUs) or about twice as far as Neptune is from our sun, and the others at 100 and 160 AUs.

The CO2 sensor didn’t pick up the inner gap that the dust sensor saw, indicating it may have been formed by something other than a planet. However, it did see gaps about the size of Saturn in the same two outer locations, providing evidence that planets knocked both gas and dust out of the way. “Our new observations provide intriguing evidence that planets are indeed forming around this one young star,” Isella says.

Scientists figure that the star, dubbed HD 163296, is about five million years old, making it one of the youngest seen with evidence of a planet. (Kepler recently spotted a Neptune-sized world around a star about the same age.) The discovery could shake up planetary formation theory, though Isella advises some caution. “We certainly believe that these structures could be the work of a nascent planet plowing through the dust, but we simply can’t rule out other possible explanations.”

Via: Space.com

Source: NRAO

Apple Watch goads you into getting some post-holiday exercise

Guilt over holiday eating might just convince you to hit the gym in the coming weeks, but Apple wants to offer some motivation of its own. On December 28th, the company pushed a notification to every Apple Watch owner encouraging them to participate in a Ring in the New Year Challenge starting January 2nd, 2017. If you complete all three of your activity goals (Move, Exercise, Stand) every day for at least one week in January, you’ll get a special achievement medal (above) and an iMessage sticker pack to help you brag about your performance.

The concept of seasonal Apple Watch achievements isn’t strictly new. Apple introduced a Thanksgiving Day 5K challenge on November 24th with similar rewards. However, the Cupertino crew is being more aggressive about notifying users. Also, you’re much more likely to realize that you can get achievements like this — there’s now a dedicated section in your iPhone’s Activity app that shows seasonal medals, including a placeholder for the not-yet-active New Year’s competition.

Not every Apple Watch owner is going to appreciate the campaign, to be sure. The alert could easily rub you the wrong way if you can’t (or just don’t care to) take up the challenge. However, it’s not shocking to see Apple go this route. In addition to promoting good health, the seasonal events offer an incentive to keep wearing your watch. You may be more likely to use the Apple Watch every day if you know that you’ll have something to show for that commitment, and that increases the chances that you’ll be interested in a future model instead of letting your current watch languish in a drawer.

Source: Mashable

Amazon plans a big digital-only sale for December 30th

You can call Amazon’s Prime Day an excuse to clear out slow-moving products, but there’s no question that it was a success — and now, the internet retailer is hoping to replicate that success for online-only sales. It’s launching a Digital Day sale on December 30th at 3AM Eastern that will offer discounts of up to 50 percent on apps, e-books, games, movies and music. The extent of the bargains isn’t clear, but it’s already teasing a few of the items on sale. You’ll get breaks on games like Destiny: Rise of Iron, Rocket League and Titanfall 2, multiple Amazon music and video titles, comic books at Comixology, numerous productivity apps and some mobile titles.

The sale lasts for 24 hours, and it’s quite clearly US-centric given the emphasis on digital game codes and other products you can’t officially get in many countries. It’s logical for Amazon to test the waters this way, though. Many people who got gadgets over the holidays are looking for something to do with those gadgets, and a well-timed download sale might get them to splurge right away instead of waiting for price cuts sometime in the new year. Digital Day might well become a yearly affair if it proves to be even a minor hit.

Source: Amazon

Nevada site bug leaks medical marijuana applicant data

Nevada residents applying to sell medical marijuana got just got an unpleasant surprise. The state’s Department of Health and Human Services has confirmed that a vulnerability in a website portal leaked the data of more than 11,700 applicants, including their driver’s license and social security numbers. Officials have taken down the relevant site until they fix the flaw, but there’s a concern that fraudsters might have seen the info and used it for malicious purposes.

The scale of the leak might be modest. A spokesperson tells ZDNet that the data represented just a “portion” of one data base among several. And when Nevada voted to legalize medical marijuana in 2000, it’s possible that some of the information is outdated. Even so, this underscores a common problem with government data: frequently, agencies are their own worst enemies thanks to avoidable security holes and imperfect policies.

Source: ZDNet

Takata expected to settle deadly airbag scandal for $1 billion

For their part in the largest US auto recall ever, the Takata Corporation is expected to pay up to a $1 billion financial penalty and plead guilty to criminal misconduct, the Wall Street Journal reports today. The National Highway Highway Traffic Safety Administration recalled some 42 million vehicles in the US alone after discovering Takata’s faulty airbag systems could deteriorate over time and risk causing an explosion of hot metal shrapnel upon inflation. The Takata systems were responsible for 11 deaths and over 100 injuries worldwide.

In addition to the criminal misconduct charges, prosecutors at the US Justice Department may also try to hit the company with wire fraud, claiming Takata faked test information and intentionally hid information about the dangerous airbags. While the settlement is not finalized yet, the Journal notes that Takata will like be allowed to pay part of the penalty up front and spread the rest out over time. The final cost could range anywhere from the “high hundreds of millions” up to a billion and the Justice Department is eager to wrap up the case in January before the new administration takes over.

Ehang preps its flight command center for passenger drones

Almost exactly a year ago, Ehang surprised the world with its supersized drone, the 184, made for carrying a human passenger or artificial organs. Nevada even gave Ehang permission to test its quadcopter in the state as of June, but that was the last we heard from the drone maker, until now. As it turns out, the Chinese company has yet to perform a single test flight in the US, and earlier this month, it had to lay off about 70 people from its team of around 300, plus there were signs of financial problems — including canteen food issues, missed payments to suppliers and diminishing consumer drone shipment numbers — as far back as August, according to Chinese news site Xtecher. Perhaps to reassure worried folks, Ehang decided to shed some light on the 184’s latest development.

According to Ehang co-founder and CMO Derrick Xiong, his company has been mobilizing “a few” 184s that have so far accumulated over 200 test flights — some were apparently fully autonomous — in China. There’s no detail on the actual number of vehicles nor test flight hours, but the company claims it’s already gathered plenty of data to improve the drone’s flight accuracy plus overall stability. One of those units is actually lurking around in the US (likely the same one we saw at CES), but without specifying reasons, Xiong confirmed to Engadget that his company has yet to perform test flights there.

In addition to test flights, the drone itself has already gone through two iterations in terms of propeller, motor, motor driver and battery design, thus resulting in a supposedly quieter, more efficient, more powerful and more reliable vehicle. But the bigger news here is the unveiling of Ehang’s flight command center, which has actually been up and running in Guangzhou for two months. This converted building is where Ehang will monitor live data — including speeds, altitude, individual propeller power, location, drone camera feed and video feed of the passenger — plus communicate with passengers and schedule air traffic.

As impressive as it sounds, many questions remain. For one, it doesn’t appear that the flight command center is fully operational just yet. In the press photos we received, the large monitor was showing placeholders for many of the drone stats, to which we were told it was because the team was still debugging the dashboard. In a recent interview with Chinese news portal Huanqiu, Xiong revealed that he had personally controlled a Ghost — Ehang’s consumer line of drones — that was 10 km away via the command center, which suggests he has yet to do the same with a 184.

Speaking of, Xiong also attacked the rumor claiming Ehang shipped as few as 200 Ghost drones a month. The exec told Huanqiu that this year his company has already shipped over 10,000 units, most of which were headed to Europe and the US — the latter boosted by the drone’s availability at Best Buy. Xiong admitted that it’s been tough fighting the price war, but he promised to continue updating current drones as well as releasing new models.

Given the circumstances, Ehang will definitely need to make a big push in 2017 to prove itself. We’ve yet to come across photos or videos of a 184 carrying a human passenger, let alone seeing a live public demo, so we’re still not entirely convinced that this project will make it in the end. Hopefully we’re wrong. We certainly don’t want to see this ambitious company ending up in the same ditch as the struggling Faraday Future or the seemingly dead Transit Elevated Bus.