The biggest news coming out of Barcelona at this year’s Mobile World Conference was not a mobile phone, but instead wearable tech, specifically watches. With Samsung having already tested the waters, albeit unsuccessfully, and Apple rumored to release a watch-like device later this year, a slew of companies arrived in Barcelona ready to show off their vision of smart, wearable devices. From sport bands, to glasses, to watches, wearable seems to of officially had it’s coming out party! Sony released their first activity tracking band, SmartBand. The band gleams information from your phone to track what you are doing and who you are doing it with. If you are doing something you want to remember, simply press a button and it will take note of where you are and who is with, and associate any photos you might take with that event. You can then go back and review these saved “life bookmarks.”
Samsung released a followup to their not-very-successful Galaxy Gear watch, now simply called Samsung Gear 2. The biggest change from its predecessor is that Gear 2 has ditched Android in favor of Tizen, an operation system designed in-house by Samsung. This switch might very likely foreshadow Samsung abandoning Android for their smartphones also. Samsung also released a fitness band called Gear Fit (pictured above).
Elsewhere, HTC and Motorola both renewed their pledge to offer a smart watch very shortly. Motorola has already showed off their very impressive looking watch but has yet to release any further details about it. Chinese firm Huawei also unveiled a sports band. Seeking to move past a glorified pedometer, their TalkBand B1 contains a wireless bluetooth headset. Ion Glasswear introduced their vision of smart glasses for people who aren’t quiet ready to wear Google Glass in public. Looking like basic eyewear, their Weon glasses have LED lights to alert you to notifications incoming to your phone.
As major technology companies release their vision of the wearable future, it will be interesting to see how the market settles out over the next 18-24 months.
