The State of Wearable Devices

Written by Daniel Burns

With the improvement of technology and miniaturization wearable tech is getting more and more advanced every year.  Wearable devices consist of three main categories; smartwatches, health and fitness devices, and AR/VR (Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality). Just like smartphones and computers in general, these devices are getting smaller and smaller while gaining power and capability the world couldn’t of imagined 5 years ago.

    For smart watches, the dream started in the 1930’s on television with the imagined radio commutation watch warn by Dick Tracy himself. Today this is a laughable reality with the addition of popular smartwatches being constantly connected, used as communicators, every single day. Smart watches started out as being a companion device to the smartphone. Connected via bluetooth, the smart watch was a way to display notifications and alerts on your wrist, track steps, and later monitor heart rate. Most of all still do very well today as those are the bare minimum specs to become a “smart watch.” There are a ton of smart watches on the market today from Apple, Samsung, Fitbit, LG, and the now defunct Pebble. But let’s look at the Apple Watch as the gold standard of smartwatches. After all, the Apple Watch now towers over any completion thanks to its massive 80+% growing market share. It started out as a really stripped down companion to the iPhone with all the basic features, an OLED display, thick shell, and only single day battery life. Now the current Series 5 is bigger, thinner, more powerful than the first 4 iPhones, has an always on display, and connects via LTE and Wifi alone when the iPhone isn’t in range. The Apple Watch has become the next iPod so to speak with its small form factor, and ability to stream and store millions of songs directly form your wrist with the help of some bluetooth EarPods or AirPods. Since the introduction of the Series 4, Apple has added the ability to take an ECG anytime on your wrist in addition to regular heart rate monitoring. Which is crazy cool and the first of its kind to be FDA approved!

    Which perfectly leads us into the health and fitness category of wearable devices. There are a numerous players in this category from the makers of Polar, Garmn, Nike, Basis, Withings, and now including Apple. These devices don’t just monitor heart rate and activity, but some can track blood pressure, sleep patterns, and other types of physical activity. Some devices can be worn around your chest with a strap, belly, arm, and wrist. Most people now prefer the wrist because of its convince and less restrictiveness during workouts. In the past chest worn devices were more accurate than wrist warn but every year sensors, data, and now AI has filled that gap along with the previously mentioned user convenience towards wrist warn being the preferred. The Apple Watch and some other devices have been credited numerous time with saving peoples lives thanks to early detection using the devices. For example the Apple Watch will let you know if you have afib thanks to monitoring for irregular heart rates, high heart rates, and now low heart rates. May have been pre diagnosed before doctor confirmation of symptoms thanks to the incredible capabilities of the Apple Watch and wearable devices as a whole. You can even thank the device in emergency situations when your phone is out of reach thanks to fall detection, automatic 911 calling, and on star type emergency button convenience.

    Other types of wearable devices now include AR and VR goggles and glasses. With VR or virtual reality googles, you can put them on and step into a whole nother world dreamed up by game developers. VR goggles and handsets rest over your head and slide onto your face covering just your eyes and ears. Using two small but high pixel dense screens and lenses, the VR goggles let you see something unlike the real world and move about the virtual space to play and explore to your hearts content. Now AR or augmented reality you overlay information on top of the real world. This can be done with glasses and small transparent screens or projections onto your eyes. It can also be achieved on your smartphone using its camera and moving about the room. In both situations you can use your hands and controllers to play and position items. It really is a unique experience that is best just explained by actually doing it in person. VR and AR is powered either internally in the goggles or glasses like a smartphone or externally through a one cable solution connected to a gaming computer or a computer with a graphics card capable of powering the experience. The most successful VR devices on the market are from Oculus and HTC with the Rift and the Vive while AR glasses have been made by Google with the Google Glass or Microsoft with its Hololens.
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    Wearable technology has come a long way thanks to the evolution of technology and Moores law. Miniaturization of components and complete systems have enabled devices like smart watches and VR glasses to become more powerful and more capable. I can’t wait for the day we wear AI powered communicators and step into full room virtual worlds just like Star Trek and The Orville alike have imagined. Dream on and virtual reality might just become our reality.

Follow Daniel Burns on Twitter, @DBurnsOfficial

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