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Google Launches 'Android Wear' Project for Wearable Devices
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Was hoping for a more in depth demo, but it is still early. Glad to learn its water resistant. Having skimmed through, you can see him using it a bit at 22:00.
It looks super nice, it even looks great on her wrist, not too big for a female.
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I wear a watch. I work in a hospital and I'd say 80% of the people wear watches, if not more. I'd say non workers more than that.
I don't think it's a mentally giant step to figure out that watches are not worn to keep time anymore. It's not like you are telling us something we didn't already know.
If you go back 5 years and did a survey on how many people walked around with tablets I'll bet you would get a very low number. Duh? I'll also bet there were plenty of naysayers such as yourself saying a tablet computer would never become mainstream. Heck I'll bet there were plenty of naysayers about smartphones before the iphone was released.
Was hoping for a more in depth demo, but it is still early. Glad to learn its water resistant. Having skimmed through, you can see him using it a bit at 22:00.
Thanks to both of you for that tiny glimpse of a working watch at the end. Here's the video itself for the skimmers reading this:
But wait a sec. His lit screen looks rectangular to me. Can someone zoom in on it?
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The gear got a bad rap. I even found myself trashing it as fugly and huge when I had never seen it in person. I recently had the opportunity to buy one and I realized I was mistaken, it's not as large as people make it out to be, nor as ugly. It's nowhere near as nice looking as the Moto360 though. It's also quite functional, I found it very nice to be able to quickly assess situations and notifications with a glance at my wrist rather than constantly taking my phone out of my pocket.
It's a great point to compare the number shipped with the actual number of phones it worked with. There is definitely some stupidity and poor marketing/engineering on Samsungs part to blame for the Gear's poor performance.
Yes it looks letter boxed but I'm going to guess maybe it's still an early beta model.
I was hoping to see more but the size of it doesn't look to bad. I hope to hear more about battery life and how it's supposed to exactly work.
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I still don't care for the Gear. It looks rushed.
The Moto360 at least looks like they thought out the fashion part which most watches are a fashion piece
Yeah this is definitely a factor, although in my short ownership with my Gear I can say it was bright enough. A bigger issue IMO is having an always on display. In theory turning your arm causing the screen to power on was a decent solution, but in practice it never quite worked that way and even if it did, was always half a second too slow. Some kind of always on screen is needed IMO.
I think if a smartwatch requires you to interact with it in any way for "at a glance" information then it has failed. If you have to flick your wrist it's failed. If you have to touch it with a finger it has failed. Of course the deeper integration will require input, but I mean the "at a glance" stuff, notifications and time mainly.
completely agree!
so far the Smart Watches that have come out have been for the most part, wrist worn computers, not watches.
they're more akin to the dick tracy watch of comic books than what your average business person wishes to wear. Making your average wrist watch wearer (say that 10 times fast) interact differently with gestures or other hand interaction for your basic functionality is a barrier to global and mass adoption that everyone is hoping for.
Pebble is the closest, but it still (even the new one) looks like a low end watch (somethign you buy at walmart for < $50). it's nicer than the original pebble, but it still isn't really that nice looking.
Try to find work near where you life and commute with public transportation. Its an innovation we europeans call cities. If you choose to spend hours in a car every day, than neither smartwatches nor headsets are the best solution. Apple just introduced "iOS in the car" for that market and it is connected to the biggest battery in your car. This new kind of competition also doesn't help with building and marketing smartwatches.
Maybe you can, but please don't make that argument over the internet. Take your non-smartphone and call me, if you want to tell me, how we all don't really need our communication devices to be small connected mobile computers.
Everything you wear on your body is a fashion statement. You can not overcome that aspect of wearable devices. Even phones are somewhat fashion accessories, thats why they come in colors and gold.
The reason why smartwatches can not be made as fashionable as dumbwatches, is because the technology isn't advanced and miniaturized enough. Smartwatches will remain big and bulky for the foreseeable future.
A smartwatch can remove the need to take your phone out of the pocket to receive a notification, but it adds the need to be charged every day. The advantages outweigh the disadvantages only when you receive a lot of notifications regularly.
Compare that to an iPhone which promises.
Standby time: Up to 250 hours
Talk time: Up to 10 hours
Internet: Up to 10 hours on LTE or Wi-Fi
Video playback: Up to 10 hours
Audio playback: Up to 40 hours
Oh, smartwatches can sit in standby for a few days, too.
But what's the point of doing nothing?
They're meant to be talking to your phone (and/or in some cases, a wireless router). Communication and the display-on time are the battery killers, just as they are for phones.
My latest smartwatch, the SmartQ Z1, lasts up to two days even with WiFi on, and that's getting towards a bearable length for me.
I'd still prefer they could last at least an entire work week. Or lacking that, come up with a quick battery replacement method that doesn't require removing the watch. Something that slides in from the side, perhaps.
The whole world will change if/when we get a true battery breakthrough.
I'm still waiting for my Pebble Steel to ship but this is huge
Google just made a power move to commoditize smartwatch hardware by putting out Android Wear. They're doing the same thing they did to smartphones - pushing the market to saturation by putting out an OS that'll probably be licensed cheaply or given out for free like Android. Only this time Apple's not in the market yet which means the longer they wait, the more disadvantaged they're gonna be.
And that Moto 360 looks good... MFG's are starting to realize they have to get the fashion part right.
Google just made a power move to commoditize smartwatch hardware by putting out Android Wear. They're doing the same thing they did to smartphones - pushing the market to saturation by putting out an OS that'll probably be licensed cheaply or given out for free like Android. Only this time Apple's not in the market yet which means the longer they wait, the more disadvantaged they're gonna be.
And that Moto 360 looks good... MFG's are starting to realize they have to get the fashion part right.
THIS. People seem to forget this or ignore it. How long will a smartphone last when the screen is on without interruption? Even I admit I hadn't considered that when I moan a bit that my Pebble needs to be charged every 3 days. Granted different screen tech. But same point.
Battery life will definitely be a major (+) for the manufacturer that can extend it the longest.
I'm intrigued to see what Moto's done with the battery and charging.
it's a secret they wont let out of the bag just yet. just that it's "different". we dont even know what sort of battery life to expect.
Imgine if they went with some form of kinetic or solar powered method like normal watches have made.
You'd have virtually a perpetually charged smartwatch.
I'm sure thats a pipedream, but it would be the ideal.
it's a secret they wont let out of the bag just yet. just that it's "different". we dont even know what sort of battery life to expect.
Imgine if they went with some form of kinetic or solar powered method like normal watches have made.
You'd have virtually a perpetually charged smartwatch.
I'm sure thats a pipedream, but it would be the ideal.
You didn't really add anything to discuss anything that I was saying other than to scold me for having to commute to work every day, sorry I'm not European enough for you but that's what I have to do to have a nice house for my family. Very weird response, I'm not sure how to respond. You shouldn't be so elitist and see that not everyone can be Euro and live on public transportation. I also disagree about headsets, they are great and are required by law. I do agree that iOS in the car is a great solution, but you are talking about an unreleased product which will only be in new cars for the most part. But the achilles heel in that argument is you can't take iOS in the car with you.
As for non-smartphones, I think you missed my point. Most consumers don't really "need" the features of something like the iphone versus lets say a flip phone. By the way a flip phone is indeed also a "small connected mobile computer" so it may be a question of semantics. You can take a 10 year old smartphone and get on the internet with it, you could read your email with it, text message, play games, etc etc so in reality what is it you think consumers "need" that they couldn't get from a non-smartphone?
Lastly I beg to differ on smartwatches never being fashionable, first of all the Moto360 is downright beautiful for a watch, much less a smartwatch, of course this is my opinion. It's not big and bulky, heck even the Samsung Gear was not big and bulky and got a bad rap IMO, possibly ugly, but it wasn't large IMO. Of course there's not much discussion there since this is based on opinion, but it seems like we kind of agree on the fashion point anyhow.
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(I don't think it's true, but) it would be so funny if Apple aren't even thinking about bringing out an "iWatch" and they just put out false rumours to troll all the other tech companies and watch them scramble something round as quick as they can
I really wouldn't give Apple that much credit. Apple's iWatch rumors didn't start until 2013 and Google purchased Wimm labs, a company developing Android watches, in the summer of 2012.
No one reason to believe any claims about the product. No one reason to believe people even want one when all is said and done.
I don't see what iPhone has to do with this product. Apple is much better at not talking about products until they are ready for prime time, but I still don't fall hook, line and sinker until the thing is on shelves and until I get it my hands.
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um, I said and you quoted "Apple certainly doesn't make commercials showing off how fake consumers are enjoying its product 6 months before it might come out."
The commercial you mention is no such thing. IT's just a bunch of people saying "hello" while using old fashioned phones from the ages. And then a picture of the iPhone at the end.
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How is that B.S.
iPhone launch: June 29, 2007
iPhone product announcement at MWC: January 9th 2007
First commercial: aired during 79th Academy Awards on February 25, 2007
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_iPhone#Advertising
and the stories Kdarling is telling were corroborated to be true. Steve Jobs himself had little faith at the announcement that the prototypes demonstrated would work well enough and had at least 4 iPhones ready to be instantly swapped in and connected in case of issue.
He showed off the frickin' device on stage. IT was live. IT worked. It wasn't a fake product.
And Apple would have preferred to wait until it was on store shelves but couldn't because they had to file with the FCC way in advance.
You can not like Apple or love Apple but if you have even a shred of objectivity or analytical intelligence then you will see, of all the corporations out there, Apple is most likely likely to wait as long as possible to announce products and most likely to not release a product before they think they really have something that people want and that is ready for prime time.
Your not seeing the forest for the trees here.
go watch the google Hangout about the Moto 360 that was recorded live the other day.
they showed the real product.
your idea that if it's not available to YOU for sale, than it's not real is laughably ignorant at best.
based on your logic, The Large hardon Collider isn't a real item either, since you can't buy it off the shelf.
and as said, about a million times. Steve Jobs was using Prototype devices in the announcement and not final retail vresions of the phones. He had numerous copies of those prototypes on stage with him, that he could easily and "invisibly" swap between, if one failed during the presentation. he was well aware that during prototyping there are bugs and issues, and he had fall back plan in case the prototype he was using during the demonstration, 6 months before it was avalable in stores worked.
You are trying really REALLY hard to argue against fact. Here's a hint. You can't argue facts, especially without facts of your own to back up your claim.