Lenovo’s ‘Magic View’ smartwatch concept hides a private display
Smartwatches, you know the drill: a touchscreen display, and it feeds you notifications and stuff. Pretty boring, right? Lenovo agrees, so has cooked up a “Magic View” concept to show things don’t need to be this way. The problem Magic View solves is simple: the small displays inherent in watches. The answer? A small, second screen in the strap that initially appears cosmetic, until you hold it to your eye. Once you do, you’ll see an image the company claims is 20 times larger than the watch’s main display. Lenovo says it’s using “optical reflection” to achieve this, and that the second display can be used for viewing maps, looking “around” images (using the accelerometer in the watch we gather) and even viewing videos — should you be ok with holding your wrist to your eye to do so.
The prototype was on show at Lenovo’s Tech World show in Beijing, and bares more than a passing resemblance to a Moto 360 — hardly surprising. Android Central say that the demo device was running an Android-based OS that was different to both Wear and Google’s main mobile operating system. The second display might seem a little goofy at first, but Lenovo is likely pitching it as a security feature, too. Given that only you can see what’s on the second screen, it’s ideal for private viewing, or showing notifications you don’t want the person next to you catching. Given that Lenovo also showed some smart shoes, that display your mood on a screen, the Magic Eye doesn’t seem so crazy after all?
Filed under: Cellphones, Wearables, Mobile, Lenovo
Pebble Time’s regular pre-orders start on June 22nd
If you missed out on Pebble Time’s crowdfunding campaign and won’t get one of the early units shipping today, you now have a date to mark on your calendar: Pebble has revealed that it’s going to start regular pre-orders for the color smartwatch on June 22nd. That’ll leave you waiting quite a while before you can even buy the $199 wearable, but you’ll at least get a more polished device for your trouble. Pebble is promising an update that lets iPhone users dictate replies to Gmail messages, so you’ll have one less reason to pull your handset out of your pocket.
Filed under: Wearables, Mobile
Source: Pebble
Pebble Time review: an underdog among smartwatches
For two years, Pebble was the smartwatch company to beat. In 2012, it raised over $10 million on Kickstarter for its simple, monochrome e-paper wristwatch, putting itself and the crowdfunding site on the map. But things move quickly in the technology world. Google has since come out with Android Wear, prompting a slew of smartphone companies to suddenly turn into watchmakers. Not to be outdone, Apple joined the fray as well, positing its own wearable as a timepiece premium enough for high-end boutiques. So when Pebble debuted the Time, its second-generation $199 smartwatch, on Kickstarter three months ago, it was facing much stiffer competition. Surprisingly, that too made crowdfunding history, raising more than $20 million in just over a month. Did 78,471 backers make the right decision? I attempt to find out.
Hardware
If you’re looking for a stylish fashion-forward smartwatch that can double as a luxury timepiece, look elsewhere. With its square display, polycarbonate shell and wide silicone bands, the Pebble Time is decidedly more geek than chic. Yet, the Time has a charm all its own, with a casual, sporty look that I rather like. Sure, it’ll probably look out of place at a fancy cocktail party, but for a simple everyday watch, I think it’s alright.
Additionally, while most smartwatches tend to be oversized and bulky for my slender wrists, the Time’s 40.5 x 37.5mm case isn’t too big or too small; it fits me just right. It’s a hair thinner than its predecessor at 9.5mm (the original Pebble was 11.5mm thick) and has a slight bend to better hug the curvature of the wrist. The stainless steel border surrounding the display also gives it a touch of class that I really appreciate — it’s certainly better than the original’s all-plastic styling.
The real differentiator between the Time and the original Pebble, however, is the display — it’s now in color. But instead of going with an OLED panel, Pebble opted for a color e-paper display. Yes, this means that the screen isn’t quite as bright and luminous as the Apple Watch and most Android Wear devices. The colors of e-paper are also a lot more muted than what you would see on an OLED display. But e-paper gives the Time a few significant advantages.
For one thing, the display is on all the time; there’s no need to press a button or flick your wrist to see what time it is. The 2.5D Gorilla Glass display is also very readable even under really bright sunlight, which isn’t what we can say about some of the other smartwatches. If you do want the display to be brighter, there’s an LED backlight that you can turn on momentarily, but there’s unfortunately no backlight timer to make it last longer than a few seconds. The biggest advantage, though, is battery life. While the Apple Watch and Android Wear devices might manage a day or two on a charge, the Time is slated to last up to seven days before running out of juice.
Unfortunately, however, the Time has a very thick bezel, which is made even worse by the aforementioned stainless steel frame. As a result, the 1.25-inch e-paper display looks positively diminutive on the Time’s watch face. Most Pebble apps are made for that screen size, so I understand the rationale for it, but it just seems like a lot of wasted space.
As for the rest of the watch’s controls, they’re pretty similar to the original Pebble — that’s right, there’s no touchscreen interface. Look around and you’ll find a back button on the left, along with up, down and select buttons on the right. The up and down buttons lead to “Past” and “Future” spots in Pebble’s new timeline interface (more on this later), although you can also map them as quick-launch shortcuts to certain applications if you press and hold down on them. The buttons are raised above the surface and are really tactile; I could find them just by feeling around. It doesn’t seem like much, but I really appreciate that I could press a button to dismiss my alarm without even looking at the watch. As a bonus, they also have some nice “give” when pushed.
Flip the watch around and you’ll notice a couple of metal pins that attach to a proprietary magnetic charging cable. Keep in mind that you won’t be able to use the charging cable from the original Pebble with the Time; you’ll simply have to use the new one. Aside from acting as charging pins, the magnetic will also work as a smart accessory port with upcoming “smartstraps” that add additional functionality to the watch. They’re not available just yet, but a few of the proposed ones add GPS, a heart rate monitor and NFC. While I wasn’t able to test these smartstraps, the idea itself is intriguing: Imagine a smartwatch that gets better over time as new smartstraps emerge. This could potentially make the Pebble Time the first-ever futureproof smartwatch.
Also on the rear of the watch are a couple of quick-release triggers so you can easily swap straps, which is a good thing because the Time has a standard 22mm lug that is compatible with a wide variety of third-party straps. Other notable hardware specs include an accelerometer (if you like, you can enable the backlight whenever you lift your wrist), a vibrating motor for alerts, a compass, a microphone for voice commands (more on this later) and an ambient light sensor that adjusts the brightness of the LED backlight depending on your surroundings. The Pebble Time is also water-resistant up to 30 meters. And, of course, it has Bluetooth 4.0 LE for connecting to your phone.
Software
Just like with the original Pebble, you’ll need to pair the watch with a phone in order for it to work. In order to do that, you’ll need to download the Pebble Time app, which is available on both Android and iOS. Once that’s done, simply go through the instructions of pairing your phone to the watch, and then you’re ready to start customizing. The software lets you add watch faces and a variety of apps, just like before. Indeed, the Pebble Time is backward-compatible with nearly 6,500 apps that are already in the Pebble app store.
But the similarities end there. Pebble didn’t just change up its hardware with the Time. Oh no, it actually created a whole new operating system for it as well. Simply called Timeline, Pebble’s new watch interface is based around the concept of, well, time. All your app notifications, reminders, events and news are now laid out in chronological order. Press the up button and you’ll see items like calendar events and sports scores from a couple hours ago. Press it again and you’ll see items from yesterday, like your total step count if you have a pedometer app installed. Inversely, pressing the down button will give you a peek at future events — say, an upcoming appointment or the weather forecast.
The idea behind this timeline metaphor is that you no longer need to launch an app to find out desired info. Simply go into the Pebble Time app on your phone and select the “Timeline pins” toggle to “pin” that particular app. So if you pinned the ESPN app, for example, you would see the scores of last night’s games if you scrolled into the “Past” (you’d need to select your favorite teams so that it knows which games to keep track of). You’d also see the time of tomorrow night’s games if you scrolled into the “Future.”
But that doesn’t mean you won’t still have access to apps. Selecting the center button from the main watch screen opens up the App Menu, which essentially lists all of the apps that you’ve installed. The default apps include Notifications, Music, Alarms and Watchfaces. Notifications is simply a list of all of your recent phone notifications; Music is a remote control for the music player on your phone; Alarms lets you set a vibrating watch alarm (duh); and Watchfaces is simply a list of different watch faces that you’ve installed and can choose from. You can also access the settings menu from the app tray, which lets you set options like your time zone, choose which app you want to use for activity tracking (more on this later) and enable or disable vibrating alerts. I especially like the ability to set a Do Not Disturb time schedule so that your watch doesn’t go crazy with notifications in the middle of the night.
As far as the number of apps that you can install, well, that depends. According to Pebble, the Time is capable of storing more than 50 apps and watch faces — it depends on how large each app/watch face is. If you install more than the watch can hold, it’ll just offload the apps you don’t use as much. If you do want to call up those old apps, it will simply reload them over Bluetooth when requested. The idea is akin to storing your music on the cloud instead of on your device. That said, I probably wouldn’t install more than a dozen or so; scrolling down the long list of apps in the app tray gets tiresome.
Of course, you can get all kinds of apps in the appstore, from funny watch faces (my favorite is the Nyan Cat one that actually shows an animated, rainbow Pop Tart cat flying through space whenever the watch is activated) to activity trackers. There is one caveat, however: You can only really have one activity-tracking app at a time. This means that if you have three similar apps, you can only assign one of them to be the one that tracks your steps.
As I alluded to earlier, there are a few big-name apps in the store already. My favorites include ESPN (so that I can keep track of how the San Francisco Giants are doing), an app called Transport that lets me hail an Uber from my wrist and FitCat, which is sort of a Tamagotchi game and an activity tracker all-in-one (the more you walk, the happier the cat becomes).
Like other smartwatches, the Time also lets you receive text messages. As for what you can do with those, well, that depends on which OS you use. Due to iOS app restrictions, you can’t really do much with messages aside from dismissing them. If you’re on Android, however, you’re able to reply to a message in a number of ways — you can either choose from a list of canned responses, one of many emojis or decide to respond by voice. If you select voice, you can then simply speak your reply and the watch will translate your voice to text as best it can. I only tested this on a few occasions, but it was pretty accurate most of the time. According to a company rep, Pebble is working hard to enable voice replies (to email at least) and note-taking on iOS as well.
About those voice commands — they’re really pretty limited to just replies and notes. You won’t be able to use them for Google Now queries or Siri commands. Pebble says that’s intentional, because it doesn’t believe those commands really work all that well. But it seems a bit like an oversight to us that you wouldn’t at least offer it as an option.
A final note about software before I move into the next section: Though it’s not a specific feature, per se, I really enjoy the touches of animations and transitions that the new interface offers. Dismissing a notification reveals a puff of smoke as it disappears; removing a pinned timeline item shows a graphic of a skull before it’s gone; and adding a new watch face prompts an animated star. Each notification also has its own unique animation and art style as it pops up. Instagram has a camera icon; Gmail has an envelope; and so forth. There are probably more that I haven’t noticed yet. It might seem a little cartoony if you’re used to the finesse of Android or Apple’s Watch OS, but it’s these small bits of whimsy that I find endearing.
Performance and battery life
The Pebble Time is a fairly basic smartwatch — it’s not trying to be a smartphone shoehorned into your wrist. As such, the performance is pretty snappy — a stark contrast to the Apple Watch, for example, which has been criticized for being a bit sluggish. There’s not much noticeable lag when shifting through menus and changing watch faces only takes a second or so. Whenever I altered some settings on the Pebble Time app, I saw those changes reflected almost immediately on the watch.
I only received the Pebble Time a few days ago, and the battery test is, well, it’s still ongoing. After about three days of constant use, it’s currently at 40 percent battery life. And that’s with all my notifications turned on — even email. I get literally hundreds of emails every day, so this is an impressive feat. I suspect that lighter use will make it last longer, but even so, the battery life is pretty impressive.
The competition
Style-wise and feature-wise, the Pebble Time doesn’t quite compare to most modern smartwatches. It doesn’t have a touchscreen; it doesn’t have NFC support; it doesn’t have a heart rate monitor; and it doesn’t have GPS. Which is why the Pebble Time’s price is problematic — it retails for close to $200. For that same money, you can get a really nice ASUS ZenWatch that’s high on style and function. For about $20 less, you can get the star of last year’s Google I/O, the Moto 360, which has seen a number of improvements since its debut (and who knows, we might see a successor at this year’s I/O). And if you’re an Apple fan, well, you have the option of the Apple Watch, which will set you back a cool $349 just for the entry-level Sport model.
The big trump card that the Pebble Time has, then, is its battery life — most of these other watches last about a couple days at most — that always-on display, its compatibility with both Android and iOS, and its smart-strap potential. The ability to tack on additional hardware features as time goes by is pretty powerful stuff, and could be the ace up Pebble Time’s sleeve. And hey, if you’re looking for a sexier-looking watch instead, that higher-end Pebble Time Steel ($299) is just around the corner.
Wrap-up
No, the Pebble Time won’t win any fashion contests with its toy-like design and cutesy animations. And no, it won’t win over those who yearn for tons of high-end features in their wearables. But if your idea of a smartwatch is that it should be more of a watch than a smartphone accessory, then the Pebble Time could be it. Its always-on display, long battery life and compatibility with both Android and iOS are attributes that most other smartwatches can’t match. The Timeline interface puts your events and app notifications in easy-to-access, chronological order, reducing the need to launch apps every time you want information. And the ability to swap out modular smartstraps means the Time could have far greater functionality than its rivals over the long term. The Pebble Time certainly isn’t for everyone, but if you’re tired of the hubbub over Android Wear and Apple Watch and want a decent alternative, then it could be well worth your time.
[Image credit: GIF courtesy of Pebble]
A pretty penny: Huawei Watch could cost around $100 more than its competitors
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The Moto 360 is an obvious first place when it comes to looks in the Android Wear world, but there is a very close second in the Huawei Watch. However, while the Moto 360 is relatively well priced among its competitors, there’s been a very big question mark around the price of Huawei‘s smartwatch after an Amazon listing put a price tag of $1000 next to the Watch. We’re learning today that it’s almost definitely not going to cost a grand, but it’s not going to be that cheap either. According to listings made on retailer MobileFun’s website, the Huawei Watch is going to start at $386.99 USD for the silver and black versions, and stretching up to $451.49 USD for the gold version.
How much can we trust these listings? As always, we have to take it with our usual grain of salt, but these pricings seem the most logical we have seen so far. That said, that would make the Huawei Watch more than $100 more expensive than its Android Wear compatriots – for reference, MobileFun is offering the leather Moto 360 variants for $257.99 USD. That puts the Huawei Watch in direct pricing competition with the LG Watch Urbane, the only other ‘premium’ Android Wear smartwatch, and although it has the advantage in the looks department, we still wonder how much of a market there is for ‘premium’ smartwatches.
What do you think about this pricing for the Huawei Watch? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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Aria for smartwatches brings gesture controls to your wrist-worn wearables
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The latest update to Android Wear does bring some gesture controls to the fledgling wearable operating system, but some clever fellows have made their own system which is compatible with not only Android Wear devices, but Pebbles as well, and uses only hand gestures. Aria for smartwatches uses a clip-on accessory that sits inside your watch band and monitors your hand movements and interprets them as gesture controls – I’m assuming there are some smarts in the device that track your muscle contractions and map these to movements like tapping your fingers together and flicking. Check out their video to see it in action:
It kind of looks a bit unwieldy at first, but when you think about it, it’s so much more intuitive to navigate a static user interface using subtle movements than need to activate the gyro like the latest Android Wear update requires you to. If this is your cup of tea, you’ll be happy to know that Aria will be starting a Kickstarter campaign on June 1st to fund its development – the bad news is that you will need to shell out $169 to get the Android Wear version (since its the developer version), but a much more reasonable $69 for the Pebble Time version. To keep an eye on news about Aria, you can subscribe for updates here.
What do you think about Aria for smartwatches? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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Clip-on adds gesture control to Pebble Time and Android Wear watches
Aria is a small add-on that clips underneath a smartwatch band and lets you control the device with finger gestures. It’s an accessory for an accessory, which sounds kind of ridiculous, but it’s not like you have a lot of choices when it comes to adding gesture control to your gadget anyway. The remote control-like clip-on can access any feature you’d usually access through the touch screen or the watch dial, completely freeing up your other hand for tasks like eating, drinking or talking on the phone. Possible gestures include tapping, flicking your fingers, and closing and opening your hand — you can configure it all through its companion app.
Aria connects to a smartwatch via Bluetooth Low Energy, and it doesn’t need a battery of its own. Its designers created two versions of the accessory for Pebble Time and Android Wear watches, and they plan to put a campaign up on Kickstarter within the next few weeks. The Android Wear version will cost you quite a bit at $169, since it was created specifically for developers. If you own a Pebble Time, though, you’ll only have to pledge at least $69. According to TechCrunch, the clip-on can also control iPhone and iPad apps, but It won’t work with any Apple Watch, even if it’s the fancy 18K gold kind.
Filed under: Wearables, Mobile
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Aria
ASUS VivoWatch review: a fitness watch with style and shortcomings
My wife often says I’m fat, but that’s hardly a motivation for me to resume my exercise routine. Then the ASUS VivoWatch landed on my desk, so I had no choice but to get back on the treadmill for your amusement. To keep things short, it turns out that this fitness-centric smartwatch does have a couple of compelling features that made me interested in getting fit again — more so than the other basic (as in no heart rate monitoring) fitness trackers that I’ve long left in the drawer. Also, the VivoWatch can pair with both iOS plus Android, and costs just under $150 in Taiwan, meaning it’ll be going head to head with the similarly priced Fitbit Charge HR around the world. So is ASUS’ first fitness device worth trying? Or should you stick to some more mature offerings? Let’s take a look.
Hardware
Compared to its $200 sibling device, the ZenWatch, ASUS’ newer and cheaper VivoWatch is all about wellness: steps, calories, heart rate, sleep quality and even UV level. With the exception of caller ID (with vibration alert), you won’t be getting any notifications from your phone. In other words, the VivoWatch is less of a smartphone companion and more of a fitness wearable. The company admits that both the ZenWatch and the VivoWatch “target distinct user groups with highly crafted, but varying features,” thus implying that there isn’t much overlap between the two groups.
It’s not every day that you come across a sports watch with such understated elegance.
In terms of design, what you get here is a curved Gorilla Glass 3 touchscreen encased within a slightly rounded stainless steel frame. It looks similar to the bigger ZenWatch from afar, except it comes with a glossy metal finish instead of a brushed one. Over time, I became a fan of the VivoWatch’s decent looks: It’s not every day that you come across a sports watch with such understated elegance. But that’s obviously subjective, and a couple of my friends did say they’d prefer something that looks a bit sportier to reflect its purpose. At the risk of sounding picky, maybe the glossy frame could use a brushed finish instead to keep fingerprints off it.
The VivoWatch has decent protection against liquids plus dust — IP67 versus IP55 on the ZenWatch, meaning it’s both dust-tight and has been certified to remain intact under one meter of water for 30 minutes. For obvious reasons, the bundled strap is made out of plastic instead of leather, but you can swap it with any standard 22mm strap.
For the sake of extending the battery life to up to 10 days, the VivoWatch uses a combination of ASUS’ self-developed, real-time OS called KoodOS; a low-power processor; and a 1.28-inch, 128 x 128-pixel, low-power, black-and-white memory LCD. The screen works very well under sunlight, and it’s also backlit for indoor usage. To juice up the watch, just snap the small charging cradle onto the back of the body and leave it there for between one to two hours.
To use the watch, you need to click on the home button on the right to unlock it. From the watch face, you can swipe horizontally to cycle through the pulse reader, the alarm, the daily activity log (for steps and calories) and the UV level detector (a feature also found on the Microsoft Band and the Samsung Gear S). You can also swipe vertically to go through the daily exercise log (total exercise time and period of aerobic activity; more on that later), daily sleep log (total sleep time and period of comfort sleep) and a happiness index based on a combination of exercise quality and sleep quality, plus all-day heart rate monitoring.
To fully appreciate the VivoWatch, you’ll want to turn on its Exercise Mode, which uses a front-facing LED to indicate whether your heart rate is within the optimal range (green) or is too intense (red, with vibration alert), according to your profile. To toggle Exercise Mode, simply hold down the home button for about four seconds; when finished, you can do the same to quit this session, and then you can sync the exercise data to your phone over Bluetooth.
Even though Mio is the true pioneer of the heart rate-zone LED indicator, ASUS improved upon it by using a much larger LED strip for easier viewing, and that, in turn, became a motivation for me. In this mode, you can also swipe horizontally to see a live chart of your heart rate, burned calories and steps, though I tended to just stick with the default stopwatch screen.
Now, it’s worth pointing out that despite its name, Exercise Mode can only track one type of workout for now: running. If you want to monitor specific types of exercises, then this isn’t for you — as is the case with many other fitness wearables made for casual runners with basic needs. On a similar note, the VivoWatch doesn’t track your distance, so serious runners may want to look elsewhere (we’ll explore some alternatives farther down in this review).
While I didn’t have other heart rate monitors on hand to do a direct comparison, I did notice that the VivoWatch’s reading occasionally fell short while I was running, and then went back up when I stood still, instead of slowly decreasing as it was supposed to. My watch was definitely secure on my wrist, although not too tight as per instruction. Maybe it was the sweat? No idea. As it happens, our friends over at DC Rainmaker and CNET found the same problem with the Fitbit Charge HR and Fitbit Surge, so this is likely a common flaw on devices with the same type of optical sensor. The only thing we can do is to make sure that the sensor is clean, and that the watch is worn securely.
When you’re not exercising, the VivoWatch will poke you with a vibration alert if you’ve been idle for too long, and it’ll also congratulate you when you meet your daily goal for either steps or calories, which can be set in the smartphone app. Toward the end of the day, the VivoWatch will automatically track your sleep. So far I’ve found it to be pretty accurate.
Companion app
Before you can use the VivoWatch, you have to first install the HiVivo app on either your Android or iOS device, set up your profile (including age, gender, height and weight) and then pair up with the watch. Every time the watch is paired, the app checks for firmware updates. When it’s available, be prepared: The update process not only takes at least 10 minutes, but also requires you to keep the app active, otherwise you’d end up with an error (at least it did on our Android handset). It was very surprising to encounter such amateur hour coming from ASUS, but even throughout my testing period, the VivoWatch’s firmware version went through several revisions — from a buggy 2.05 to a more stable 2.11 — so at least it’s apparent that the company is actively fine-tuning the product.
As you’d expect, the app gives you a good overview of your fitness parameters in the form of charts, so you can easily track your progress throughout the day or week. But of course, you can already see your basic daily data on the watch’s reasonably sized screen. It goes without saying that your fitness data is synced to the cloud, so even if you switch to another phone, you’ll be able to restore your charts.
The extra bit of info that you do get in the app is a chart of your heart rate throughout the day, and an indication of how much of your exercise was aerobic and anaerobic. For those who aren’t familiar: Unless you’re an athlete or have specific fitness goals, chances are you only want to do aerobic training just for the sake of staying healthy, so you’ll find the app’s Exercise Mode chart useful for analyzing your performance. Unfortunately, ASUS says you can’t export the data to third-party apps like RunKeeper and Strava, so you’re stuck with HiVivo and its website counterpart that ASUS is still working on.
Another interesting feature in this app is the Network section where you can view your friends’ happiness index, as well as their workout time and sleep time. You can view this as a competitive element, but there’s also a “Like” button next to each name for a bit of encouragement. Sadly, I didn’t have any other VivoWatch users to add, which makes us wonder: Maybe ASUS should consider selling discounted bundles to couples and families? We’ll let their business folks do the maths.
The competition
You get the Fitbit Surge’s form factor for the price of the Fitbit Charge HR.
With its $150 price point and pseudo-smartwatch touchscreen, it’s easy to place the VivoWatch somewhere between the Fitbit Charge HR and the $250 Fitbit Surge. In many ways, ASUS’ device is a better buy: You get the Surge’s form factor for the price of the Charge HR, and it’s also prettier — in such a way that you can actually wear it as your everyday watch. The large heart rate zone LED is a nice bonus as well. Having said that, hardcore runners may want to pay more for the Surge’s GPS tracking to estimate distance, and some may want to take advantage of Fitbit’s robust food database.
Other similarly specced rivals include the $200 Basis Peak, the $150 Garmin Vivosmart and the $200 Microsoft Band. In terms of comfort, it’s safe to assume that the VivoWatch beats the Vivosmart and the Microsoft Band, even though they offer more features like distance tracking, cycling mode and smartphone notifications. This leaves us with the Basis Peak, which, again, doesn’t look as good, but the extra cost is somewhat justified by its support for smartphone notifications and automatic workout tracking.
Wrap-up
While this may be ASUS’ first attempt at making a fitness watch, it’s a surprisingly good one. At $150, the VivoWatch manages to beat the crowd by bringing in a handy set of features — especially continuous heart rate monitoring and automatic sleep tracking — all wrapped in a good-looking package that you could easily wear in the office. With the exception of the aforementioned app bugs and the occasional heart rate reading errors, the VivoWatch has all the right ingredients to get casual runners motivated. But if you consider yourself a serious runner, then you’re probably better off looking at GPS-enabled alternatives, as well as those with super-accurate heart rate monitors — namely the ones from Mio.
Given that the VivoWatch is still actively being updated, we have a couple of suggestions for ASUS. How about a sleep cycle-based smart alarm as featured on all Jawbone Up bands? And smartphone notifications would be nice as well.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, apparently it’s “time to move” again.
Android Wear 5.1.1 for the LG G Watch and LG G Watch R are rolling out from today
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We heard last week that Android Wear 5.1.1 was starting to be rolled out, first with the ASUS ZenWatch. Of course, the LG Watch Urbane was the first watch to have this latest build of Android Wear, but all other Android Wear devices have had to wait around patiently, until now. Next on the list of updates is Android Wear 5.1.1 for the LG G Watch and LG G Watch R, who has been confirmed to have started receiving the update as of today.
For those wondering why their Sony SmartWatch 3, Moto 360 or Samsung Gear Live have yet to get the update, this is because the LG G Watch, LG G Watch R and ASUS ZenWatch all do not possess Wi-Fi functionality (which the other devices do) meaning their version would have been easier to develop – we’re not expecting too much more of a delay before Android Wear 5.1.1 is rolled out to the rest of the devices. For those of you who do have a LG G Watch or LG G Watch R, if you aren’t seeing the update today, don’t panic – as is commonplace with Android updates, they are staged and could take a few days before they reach your device.
Do you have a LG G Watch or LG G Watch R and have the update? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
Source: Android Police
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This smartwatch doubles as a wearable wireless storage
ReVault looks just like any ordinary smartwatch, but its main feature’s quite different from others in the category: it has wireless local storage you can access like a private cloud. According to its Indiegogo page, the storage is accessible from your phones, tablets or laptops using an app (like Dropbox and other cloud services) that works on Android, iOS, Mac OS X, Windows and even Linux. You can even program a trusted device to auto-sync every time you save new images or download files — anything you store will be encrypted, and you can also set up a password and two-factor authentication for added security. The watch connects to those devices via WiFi and Bluetooth, and since it can make its own WiFi network, you can upload files even without internet connection.
Here’s another nice touch: In case you’re not really attracted to smartwatches (and you’re not alone there), you can use the converter it comes with to turn it into a necklace or a keychain. Plus, you can choose among quite a few watchfaces if the default one doesn’t do it for you. You can get a 32GB or a 128GB ReVault if you pledge at least $169 on Indiegogo, but like every other crowdfunding project, it’ll ship out (in January 2016) only if it reaches its goal. Note that if it does, you’ll still have to buy a separate Qi wireless charger if you want to use the watch beyond its initial three-day battery life.
Filed under: Wearables, Mobile
Source: Indiegogo
The first Apple Watch update arrives with faster app performance
The Apple Watch arrived on the scene with at least a few rough edges, but the crew at 1 Infinite Loop is trying to smooth at least some of them today. The company has released a 1.0.1 update for the Watch that improves performance across the board, and should be a particular help with third-party apps hosted on your iPhone — many of which seemingly took forever to load in the original release. The difference isn’t dramatic in our experience, but it is there. Your wristwear should also do better jobs with Siri voice recognition and calculating fitness data (such as calories and distance), and the interface supports seven extra languages ranging from Brazilian Portugese to Turkish. This doesn’t include any of the big interface-level features hinted at in recent rumors, but it’s good to see Apple’s first wearable get some much-needed polish.
AIVAnet 