wearables

A Simple Ceramic Watch Born From Dieter Rams’ Design Philosophy

At $440 it’s not the cheapest or most functional timekeeper you can strap to your wrist, but if aesthetics are your priority when buying a watch, you’re not going to find anything simpler or cleaner than one created using Dieter Rams’ design philosophy. Braun’s latest timepiece features a case and strap made entirely from ceramic…

BioSport Earbuds: Finally, A Fitness Tracker You Never Have to Charge

As we reported earlier, 50 Cent and SMS Audio announced a new partnership with Intel this evening. It’s a plan to bring the joys of fitness tracking to both the flakey workout amateur and the finely sculpted sports pro in the form of earbuds. The BioSport In-Ear headphones can track your heart rate—no batteries needed.…

Exclusive: 50 Cent’s SMS Audio Making Headphones That Keep Track of Your Run

50 Cent’s SMS Audio is about to announce a major deal that could help keep it from getting left behind by the newly forged Apple-Beats powerhouse. Sources close to the deal told us that the company will announce a new set of headphones based on Intel’s health monitoring technology this very evening. SMS is no…

Future Wearables Could Communicate Using Reflected Wi-Fi

Sending data between small, portable devices is full of compromise: higher transfer rates usually means a bigger drain on the battery. But UCLA researchers have a plan to use reflected Wi-Fi signals to help solve that problem. A teams from UCLA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has spent the last two years developing technology which allows small…

Dinosaurs Can Roam the Earth Again With Righteous Tricera Hi-Top Shoes

The news has been rough this week, but you can have faith that some things are still going right because someone has invented a pair of dinosaur sneakers called Tricera Hi-Tops. They’re about as close as we can get to bringing dinos back from extinction. Also they’re super cool. Dinosaurs have long been gone from…

What Is the Weirdest Gadget You’ve Ever Seen?

This week we’ve witnessed some weird wearables. First, was the SexFit (pictured above), which—as I’m sure the form factor gives away—is a wearable to help quantify a man’s sexual prowess. Then, we saw the Sproutling Baby Monitor, a health tracker for infants. Now, it’s rumored that the Samsung’s Gear Solo, a smartwatch with its own…

A Genuinely Smart Watch That Puts a Hands-Free Flashlight On Your Wrist

Nearly every non-mechanical watch comes with a light of some sort letting you read the time in the dark, but SureFire’s 2211 Luminox WristLight is the first to come with a built-in light that can illuminate an entire room in the middle of the night. Specifically designed for law enforcement, the military, and emergency response…

Timex’s New Ironman Smartwatch Lets You Leave Your Phone At Home

For those times when a rigorous run or other extreme outdoor activity has you leaving your smartphone at home, Timex has created a new fitness-oriented smartwatch that doesn’t need a constant connection to your phone. The Ironman One GPS+ comes with its own 3G connection for uploading fitness data or your current location, or reach…

Casio’s Latest Bluetooth Watch Puts Song Recognition on Your Wrist

As far as smartwatches go, Casio has been taking a relatively simplistic approach with its Bluetooth-equipped timepieces, happy to use its smartphone connection to provide notifications and brief previews of incoming messages and emails. The new GBA-400 goes a bit further, though, by telling you what song is playing right there on its display. A…

A Smart Headband That Keeps Your Kids Safe (and Forever Alone)

No one wants their young kids to fall into an unattended pool. It’s (one of) a parent’s (many) worst nightmare(s). iSwimband is designed to let you know immediately if the worst should happen. And probably also to keep your kids from making any friends. The concept of iSwimband is simple: it’s a water-detecting bluetooth sensor…

The Watch That Walked On the Moon Gets an Anniversary Upgrade

Believe it or not not, the watch that Buzz Aldrin wore as he took those first steps on the moon wasn’t some custom contraption engineered by NASA to endure the vacuum of space. It was an Omega Speedmaster Chronograph, and 45 years later the watchmaker has released a commemorative follow-up called the Speedmaster Professional Apollo…

There’s an Actual Piece of the Wright Flyer Inside Bremont’s New Watch

Starting in 2010, Bremont has been paying homage to significant moments in the history of technology with a unique line of watches that includes the Codebreaker which celebrated the work of the WWII Enigma machine crackers. Now the watchmaker is honoring the Wright Brothers’ achievements with a new timepiece that includes an actual piece of…

A $13 Wearable You’ll Actually Want to Wear

While the most we’ve seen of Apple’s smartwatch is a patent, Xiaomi (a company often referred to as the “Chinese Apple”) just announced a new line of $13 (!) wearables. And even better—they actually look like something you’d want to wear. The Mi Band line may not have a display, but it does pack in…

iTime: Smartwatch Patent Shows Apple’s Broad Ambitions

This morning the folks over at AppleInsider discovered that Apple was granted a patent today for the iTime, which can only be described as a device-connected smartwatch that offers advanced functionality like arm and wrist gestures, as well as advanced proximity sensing, through a sensor-laden smart strap. But unlike the all-in-one smartwatch devices already revealed…

Google has confirmed that Android Wear will support custom watch faces—which could be good or bad, depending on how you look at it.

Google Is Now Doing Free Glass Demos

Google is running a series of base camps in in Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco where you can try out Glass, gratis. CNET reports that Google is inviting anyone from the general public to “sit down with a Glass Guide.” If you head along to such a session, you’ll get to try out…

Google’s Smart Contact Lenses Are Going to Become a Real Thing

Remember Google’s smart contact lenses? Well, now the giant Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis is turning them into a commercial reality. The two companies have announced that Novartis is licensing Google’s technology to create special contact lenses for diabetic patients. The new lenses will analyze tear fluid in the eye and provide real-time, constant measurement of…

The Simplest Way to Track Your Sleep Yet

A lot of us suck at sleep. But exactly how do we suck at it? Do we toss and turn a lot? Snore? Are we roused by outside noises? Well, the new Misfit Beddit Sleep System promises to answer those questions. You might remember Misfit as the makers of the Shine—one of the most attractive…

The Metal Once Used to Coat DVDs Could Make Ultrathin Color Screens

It’s 2014 and DVDs are years past futuristic. But researchers at Oxford think that a metal alloy in DVDs could also be used to make thin, flexible, and low-power screens for wearables. Here’s how it works. Both the novel screens and DVDs function by exploiting the phase change properties of germanium-antimony-tellurium (GST). Shooting a laser…

Google Now Gets Voice Control for Music Playback

Some Android users are starting to see a cool new Google Now capability pop up: If you’ve got the update, you can use “OK Google” to fast forward to the next track or pause playback. Small update, but very handy. YouTuber MO Jams shows the feature in action above, and Android Police predicts that this…