The state of wearable tech in 2014

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News By Russell Holly Dec. 30, 2013 10:00 am
If you didn’t join the horde of gadget-hungry would-be cyborgs in 2013, it was probably because the nascent wearables market is cluttered with incomplete thoughts and unfinished projects. 2014 promises to be a year of polish, with products that offer real benefits to their users, so if you’ve been causally interested it might be time to pay closer attention.
This past year we’ve seen and explosion of smartwatches, fitness trackers, face-mounted computers, and smart rings. We’ve seen this technology show up in just about every color, shape, size, and price tag, and very few of them have actually been worth owning. There are lots of companies shooting wildly into the dark in the hopes of hitting something, but in each of these wearable categories there hasn’t really been a single all-encompassing idea that is meant for everyone in that niche. 2013 was filled with guesses and re-calibrations based on those guesses, and as a result 2014 is going to be amazing for wearables.

[h=3]Smartwatches – *Notification dumpsters no longer[/h] Regardless of which smartwatch is your personal favorite, none of them can hold a candle to Pebble right now. After an explosive Kickstarter campaign and continues sales success in retail stores, the Pebble community has reached a place where the competition will resort to imitation moving forward. This is mostly a good thing, as there’s a lot of positive things going on in the Pebble community right now with user submitted features and watch faces. Perhaps most important of all, however, is the next version of the OS. Apps are coming to Pebble in a big way, and it is going to be chaotic and fantastic and terrible all at once.
A successful workflow on a smartwatch depends on one painfully obvious thing, and it’s something that is very easy to mess up depending on which side of the development process you are on. Plain and simple, there are exactly zero times where it is acceptable for a task on your watch to take longer it than the time needed to pull your smartphone out and complete the task. Apps for smartwatches have incredible potential as long as they follow that rule, no matter who the manufacturer or developer is. As long as it is actually more convenient to perform the action on the watch, it will be worth it to do so.
Everything that is happening in the smartwatch world right now is in preparation for the big companies to get involved. Samsung’s strange and awkward Galaxy Gear and Qualcomm’s fantastic Toq project are prime examples, but the sleeper in the mix will show itself in a big way this year. Google’s “Gem” watch has been in development for quite a while now, and it shouldn’t shock anyone to see this pulled out on stage during Google IO this coming year. Coupled with a wearable specific SDK that allows wearables to play nice with Android, this whole landscape could wildly change for the better this year.

[h=3]Fitness trackers – Function inside form[/h] Apple and Google both made quiet but significant efforts to move your fitness tracker into your phone towards the end of 2013. Both iOS 7 and Android 4.4, coupled with the iPhone 5S and the Nexus 5, included the hardware needed to replace separate hardware for casual users. Fortunately for the people who make fitness trackers, there’s still a whole lot more these devices offer. This year for fitness trackers was all about making the devices so comfortable to wear that you never thought about having them on your wrist. With the form factors available now, the next generation of these devices will be all about features.
The problems that surround fitness trackers right now fit into several different categories. The batteries don’t always last as long as they need to, they don’t all collect the same kind of information, syncing isn’t always seamless or convenient, and the software is rarely available on every device you are likely to own. Most fitness trackers picked one or two of these areas to focus on this year, but no one really nailed every category. This is going to be the next big step for these devices, in order to demonstrate that they can’t just be replaced by a smartwatch or a motion sensing smartphone.
FitBit, Jawbone, and Misfit are all leaders in this market already, and they will undoubtedly continue to be successful here as new features become available. The Misfit Shine is particularly impressive, as it has been on the market for significantly less time but has improved dramatically since it was launched. These three companies will continue to compete in 2014, and regardless of which one you own the competition will only serve to make your hardware better.
Next page: Face computers, NFC rings, and things…



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