If you’re in the market for a device to help you during your next workout, Samsung has just updated its fitness lineup with three new products.
Samsung’s IFA press conference was all about wearables. The new devices are all fitness-focused, from the Gear Fit2 Pro and the all-new Gear Sport, to the second generation Gear IconX wireless earbuds. We got some brief hands-on time with these devices, so let’s take a closer look.
Apple has been very busy. This week, on the 10th anniversary of the iPhone, the company unveiled a 4K-ready Apple TV, three new phones and a campus and theater dedicated to late founder Steve Jobs. It also announced the Apple Watch Series 3, which sports a barometric altimeter to track your elevation, can now stream music and connect to a cellular network so you no longer need your phone for all your notifications and calls. But while those additions all sound useful, what really stuck out was a feature that has the potential to save lives.
At this week’s event, Apple teased something called Heart Study, which launches later this year. With the help of Stanford Medicine and the FDA, Heart Study will use Apple Watch data to detect irregularities in heart rhythms, including potentially serious conditions like atrial fibrillation. Details on how Heart Study will work or look are sparse at the moment, but it appears Apple’s device will keep an eye out for, and actively flag, irregularities in your pulse. That’s different from existing systems that simply chart your performance and don’t alert you to anomalies.
NEJM Catalyst; Glenn Fox, PhD, Shaun Garland, PhD, Andrew Keibel, MD & Leslie A. Saxon, MD from
Wearable technology can benefit health only if it leads to enduring behavior change. There are more than 1,000 commercially available wearable devices that can be paired to a software application (app) to measure and improve health behavior, and one in five Americans has purchased one. Despite their ubiquity, there has been little systematic measurement and understanding of how people use and stop using them. The research that does exist, emerging mostly from market research white papers, tells a story of rapid abandonment. Most users report increased physical activity after purchasing a sensor, but the longer they own it, the less they use it: nearly one third of all users cease tracking activity six months after purchase.
In order to derive sustained health benefits from activity sensors, it is important to understand why users often abandon their devices. Qualitative analyses of the reasons include forgetting to wear the device, discomfort during exercise, lack of aesthetic appeal, and loss of interest. In some cases, users report they have met their fitness goals and no longer rely on the device. Previous studies of device usage by small numbers of patients provide evidence that leveraging peer support to encourage activity and other healthful habits achieves more favorable health outcomes than self-motivation.
A few weeks ago as part of Garmin’s trifecta announcement of new Vivo-labeled products, they announced the Vivosport (along with the Vivomove HR and Vivoactive 3). In many ways the Vivosport got overlooked as it lacked the fashionista flashiness of the Vivomove HR, while also lacking all the bells and whistles of the Vivoactive 3 (like contactless payments).
But the Vivosport actually has a bunch of new features in it that combine the Vivosmart 3 they released earlier this spring, with the Vivosmart HR+ from a year ago. Said differently: You now get GPS in the band (which wasn’t in the Vivosmart 3), but all the new stress tracking, VO2Max, and similar features of the Vivosmart 3 units.
Reuters, Supantha Mukherjee and Stephen Nellis from
Apple Inc on Wednesday conceded its latest smartwatch unveiled a week ago has problems with its most important feature: the ability to make phone calls and access data without an iPhone nearby.
Several prominent reviewers said Wednesday they could not recommend the device because of a wifi glitch that causes cellular connectivity problems.
… Wearable device vendors will ship 121.7 million units by the end of 2017, a 16.6 percent annual increase, according to IDC’s latest forecast. By 2021, that figure will reach 229.5 million wearables, representing a 17.2 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR).
Much of that growth will be driven by wrist-worn devices like smartwatches and health trackers, which are typically perched on a very accessible part of the human body.
While the Ionic smartwatch is the star of the show for Fitbit this holiday, it’s also breaking ground in a new direction with the Fitbit Flyer, the brand’s first foray into wireless earbuds.
The Fitbit Flyer is a set of wireless earbuds connected by a fitness band, with stylish metal accents on the sides of the buds. The Flyer is stylish, and the angular design of the buds coordinates well with the rigid shape of the Ionic. Like many earbuds, the Flyer maneuvers through your playlist with a typical three-button navigation. The power button, though, is awkwardly situated on the top of the right earbud. It’s extremely easy to miss, and it actually took me a few minutes to find it the first time I tried to turn them on.
Twitter alums are taking over the health-technology sector.
A LinkedIn search revealed that more than 20 former Twitter employees are now at health, fitness and bio-tech start-ups, including former CEO Dick Costolo, media head Katie Jacobs Stanton, and engineering VP Nandini Ramani. The vast majority of them joined or founded these companies in the past two years, in the midst of Twitter’s well-documented executive shakeup.
… The idea is to move toward an “open data set,” taking what Dunham calls “known behaviors” like check-ins to the clubs, classes taken and massages booked — and link it to “unknown” data. That is, Equinox wants to figure out what those behaviors put together say about a given member and how it can serve that member.
In early March, the company built a full “customer profile” system that took various data points from customers to turn them into trackable behaviors that may then serve as predictions.
Wearable gadgets hit the consumer market with a bang in in 1979, when the first Sony Walkman was introduced. The portable cassette player revolutionized the way people listened to music, and cost US$150. On the business and communication side, another seminal technology emerged at the turn of the 21st century: Nokia’s bluetooth headsets.
Notable wearables today include Fitbit wristbands, the Apple watch, Google Glass, and Playstation VR — all of which have gained great market shares. As the data-collecting portal to the IoT, wearables hold many future possibilities. Big tech, university spinoffs, and startups continue to compete for market shares in a rapidly growing industry. There is a 4×4 matrix for wearable applications: gadgets can be worn on the head, wrist, body, or stand alone; and be applied to fitness, healthcare, gaming & entertainment, or multi-functional uses.
Scientists from RIKEN and the University of Tokyo have developed a new type of ultra-thin photovoltaic device, coated on both sides with stretchable and waterproof films, which can continue to provide electricity from sunlight even after being soaked in water or being stretched and compressed. The work, published in Nature Energy, could open the way to wearable solar cells, which will provide power to devices such as health monitors incorporated into clothing. One of the requirements of the Internet of Things — referring to a world where devices of all sorts are connected to the Internet — is the development of power sources for a host of devices, including devices that can be worn on the body.
According to Takao Someya, the leader of the research group, these could include sensors that record heartbeats and body temperature, for example, providing early warning of medical problems. In the past, attempts have been made to create photovoltaics that could be incorporated into textiles, but typically they lacked at least one of the important properties — long-term stability in both air and water, energy efficiency, and robustness including resistance to deformation — that are key to successful devices.
The researchers and engineers behind Giro and Bell’s in-house test lab, The Dome, recently launched HelmetFacts.com. It’s a website where athletes who need to protect their noggins (ahem, triathletes) can find info on everything from helmet materials to standards and testing protocols. Wondering what that cert on your brain bucket means? Allow The Dome team to clarify.
The world’s top professional surfers got a glimpse of their competitive future on Tuesday: an assembly line of perfect waves, each one identical to the one before it, and all breaking at perfectly timed intervals.
The strange part? The surf was created by a manufactured wave system, and the whole thing took place on a man-made lake in the middle of central California.
The long-rumored test event was hosted by the World Surf League behind closed doors at Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch in Lemoore, Calif.
… I grew up nerding out on ski gear. But in recent years—as in, since the start of the twenty-first century—work and parenthood have sapped most of my energy for such extracurriculars. To reverse that bummer trend, last month I fulfilled a childhood dream and flew to Portillo, Chile for some preseason turns and a sneak peek at the near horizon of ski equipment.
