Samsung launches a flexible platform of sensors for wearables

At Samsung’s “Voice of the Body” event today, the company announced SIMBAND, a modular reference platform for wearable health sensors that it hopes will inspire a new generation of fitness products. The prototype device you see above has a multitude of sensors built right into it, including an optical light sensor that can detect the variation of light absorption through the skin in order to come up with your pulse and other data. There’s even an ECG sensor integrated into the watchband so that when you touch the clasp, an electrical route is completed.

Samsung says SIMBAND is completely multimodal — the optical, electrical and physical components can be swapped out, and it’s entirely built for customization. The company also wanted to drive home that SIMBAND is designed to be very power efficient (it has a new shuttle battery) while not taking up a lot of space — the prototype watchface on stage is only about half the size of an SD card. Additionally, it has a 1GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 28nm chip along with WiFi and Bluetooth technologies.

SIMBAND is designed as an open platform that allows developers to create new applications, and the SDK is slated to be out in the next few months. Through several open APIs that it hopes to release later this year, Samsung is looking to integrate the platform with SAMI (Samsung Architecture for Multimodal Interactions), its internal data-collection initiative that attempts to make all that fitness data accessible to other services and devices, such as S Health, your phone or perhaps your scale.

The potential for the platform goes beyond just fitness trackers. Samsung also says it’s working on a partnership with UCSF’s Digital Health Innovation Lab to see if these huge data sets can create new predictive models of health and wellness for all of us, and not just on the individual level. This way, it could provide a “truly meaningful impact on health.” UCSF has said it’s happy to partner with startups to ensure that their application or device is doing what it’s intended to do.

To cap off the event, Samsung announced the Digital Health Challenge, which is essentially a $50 million investment fund aimed at startups so that they’ll adopt Samsung’s open platforms and the latest health technologies.

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Source: Businesswire, Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center

Watch Samsung’s ‘Voice of the Body’ event here

When we received an invitation for a Samsung event “around health” a few weeks ago, our thoughts immediately leapt to a potential health-centered product, perhaps either a new wearable or an updated app. Since then, we’ve heard tell that there would be no such announcements at all. Which, given that the event is set up by Samsung’s Strategy and Innovation Center — known more for components and partnerships — is not entirely surprising. Still, the fact that the event is now dubbed “Voice of the Body” and will be held at the SFJazz Center makes us intrigued as to what Samsung has planned for the “future of health.” Thankfully, the company has provided us a livestream of the event, which starts at 10:30 a.m. PT/1:30 p.m. ET. You can tune into it after the break.

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8.4-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab S details revealed

Further details of one of the tablets we are expecting to see Samsung reveal next month have been leaked on the bench-marking app AnTuTu.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 have emerged on AnTuTu giving an insight into the hardware we can expect to see in the tablet.

According to the leak, the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 will have a Exynos 5 Octa 5420 processor with an ARM Mall-T628 GPU. In addition, the 8.4-inch display is shown to have a 2560 x 1600 resolution, and will feature 3GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, and a 2-Megapixel front-facing and 8-Megapixel rear-facing camera.

Samsung is holding a press event on the 12th June where they are expected to announce their lineup of next generation Galaxy tablets.

The post 8.4-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab S details revealed appeared first on AndroidGuys.

Museum teams up with Samsung to render mummies in 3D (video)

Thanks to more advanced medical CT scanners, we can now look at what’s inside the British Museum’s mummies… even if they remain wrapped. The museum has partnered with Samsung to provide 3D visuals for eight mummies of people who lived in the Nile Valley as far back as 4,000 years ago created using high-res CT scans. These visuals (some of them even interactive) show you what lies underneath all those mummified layers, from accessories and hairstyles that indicate their status in life, to the state of their health when they passed away. For instance, you’ll see that a man of high status was buried with gold leaves and facial features painted on his wrappings, while a lowly temple doorkeeper had his severed head roughly reattached with wooden poles. The exhibit’s already live for anyone interested in (digitally) peeling layers off the ancient remains, and it’ll be around until November 30th this year.

Filed under: Misc

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Via: Gizmodo, New Scientist

Source: British Museum

Samsung shows a smartwatch concept you control by waving your hands

Touchscreens on smartwatches are limited by their very nature; there’s only so much you can fit on a tiny piece of glass. However, Samsung might overcome that surface area limit if it ever implements a recently published patent application. Its smartwatch concept would let you perform relatively complex tasks just by waving your hands in front of a built-in camera. You could send content to a TV just by flicking your hand, for example, or select something by pointing your finger.

That wouldn’t be the only party trick. The watch would recognize wrist gestures beyond the simple screen activation you find in Samsung’s Gear line, for a start. It would also have a Moto 360-style circular display with both an optimized touchscreen interface and a rotating ring for tasks like scrolling. It’s an ambitious, do-it-all design, and it won’t be surprising if Samsung only uses some of the technology — if it’s used at all. When Samsung is already big on gesture control and plans to support Android Wear, though, there’s a real chance that future smartwatches will let you do much more than poke at buttons and issue simple voice commands.

Filed under: Wearables, Samsung

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Via: Android Authority, Sammy Today

Source: USPTO