smartwatch - page 3

Fitbit is looking to make a splash on Wall Street by filing to go public. The company behind the Flex activity trackers announced it is looking to raise $100 million in an initial public offering later this year.

Fitbit sold 10.2 million devices last year, and is the first wearable technology company to go public. But now that Apple Watch is available to the public, Fibit is warning investors in its filing that it could potentially be “more competitive than our products and services.”

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This is the year computer power migrates to our wrists. We have the roll-out hype of the Apple Watch to thank for that. But one company wants that power to be flexed through a flick of the wrist.

Reemo is software and a wrist device you probably haven’t heard of. It doesn’t come in gold or send your heartbeat to a loved one.

It is built around the emerging technology of gesture control — users become maestros in their homes and offices. With a range of gestures and arm movements, users can control the volume on televisions and stereos, trigger door looks, drop the temperature of a room and power lighting up or down.

Samsung’s not had too much luck with smartwatches, but a newly-published patent application shows that it’s not ready to throw in the towel just yet.

The patent describes what is less a traditional watch than a wristband or He-Man-style manacle. It features a wraparound widescreen display, able to function in both bent and flat states, and describes its possible applications as multimedia viewing and communication.

After all, you never know when you’ll need to summon Battle Cat to help in your ongoing war with Skeletor and his cronies!

Pebble has promised us big things for 2015, and our wait for those could be over sooner than anticipated. The company today erected a countdown on its website that ends on Tuesday, February 24, at 7 a.m. PT.

Swatch Group AG isn’t planning to just roll over dead now that Apple is entering the timepiece market. Swatch announced today that it’s preparing its own smartwatch to take on Apple Watch, and it’ll be ready to launch in just three months.

Swatch CEO Nick Hayek was originally skeptical of the smartwatch revolution two years ago, but in an interview with Bloomberg, Hayek said his company is ready to throw its numerous patents into a smartwatch that won’t need daily recharging.

Having previously taken a crack at the smartwatch market with its now-discontinued SPOT technology, Microsoft is looking to get back into the wearables space according to a report from Forbes, citing anonymous sources.

The watch will apparently be launched in the next few weeks and will work across a variety of platforms, which makes perfect sense since Windows Phone is a distant third compared to Android and iPhone handsets.

Its timing is an effort to capture the potentially-lucrative holiday market.

Some of the best tech ideas come from taking two separate concepts and trying to merge them together into one device.

With all the chatter about smartwatches and smartphones as of late, it was only going to be so long before someone tried to combine the two: creating a gadget that gives smartwatch-like functionality while on the wrist, but also allows the user to take it off and use it like a smartphone when necessary.

That’s the idea behind .klatz, a Ukrainian “smartwatch/watchphone” project that’s currently raising money on Indiegogo. Its creator points out its iOS support — which means that you can pair it with an iPhone if you don’t fancy using it as your primary handset — while a promo video for the project shows it providing Pebble-style notifications, along with fitness tracking and music playing functionality.

Now that Apple has entered the watch game, even the horological old guard is starting to take notice. Just a few days after Apple unveiled the Apple Watch, Swiss luxury watchmaker TAG Heuer has announced that it’s planning on making a smartwatch too … although they say they don’t just want to copy the Apple Watch.

Finally … a stylish smartwatch!

Smart watches are cool, but very, very nerdy-looking. Not that being a nerd is off-putting, but you may not always want to send that message when someone looks at your wrist.

That’s why the COOKOO watch is so awesome. It gives you most of the functionality of any competing smart watch, and you can still wear it on a date without looking like you’re going to have Scotty beam you up out of the restaurant mid-meal. And you can get one for yourself for 23% off the regular price…just $99!

The smartwatch race is on, and Microsoft has its own contender in the works.

Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smartwatch lineup is widely considered a dud, and many are waiting to see what Apple has up its sleeve with the iWatch. Not to be left behind, Microsoft is gunning for the fitness market with a wearable of its own that could arrive as early as this summer..

Perhaps most surprising of all is that Microsoft’s device will reportedly be platform agnostic, meaning it would work with Android and even the iPhone.

If you have a Pebble watch, don’t download the Pebble 2.1 update. It could very well brick your smart watch.

Apple’s much-anticipated iWatch could use solar power and wireless charging technology to prolong battery life and make juicing up as painless as possible, according to sources familiar with the company’s plans who have been speaking to The New York Times.

One of the biggest challenges Apple faces in perfecting its smartwatch is ensuring it offers enough power to get us through the day. Its goal, according to earlier reports, is to provide at least four to five days of use before a charge is needed, but that’s no easy feat for a device that must be small enough to wear on your wrist.

Apple has chosen LG Electronics as its sole manufacturing partner for the iWatch, according to a new report from Korea. The device is expected to use the same curved OLED display technology LG recently debuted with its G Flex smartphone, and production could begin during the third quarter of this year.

Smartwatches today are a little bit like PDAs in the early 1990s: that technology that everyone seems sure is the future, but which no one has really got right yet.

Well, add Archos’ name to the list of companies willing to try and rectify that situation.

If you’ve been meaning to treat yourself to a Pebble smartwatch and you haven’t already blown all of your savings on other Black Friday deals, then you might be interested to know that you can now get $20 off the device for one day only.

Something big is coming from Pebble, makers of everyone’s favorite e-ink smartwatch. We’re just not entirely sure what it is yet. But we have an idea, and it has to do with Pebble apps developers.

The people behind Vybe are calling it a “smart bracelet,” because it’s missing a key element included in all smartwatches: the screen. Instead of relaying information through a display, Vybe vibrates, nagging you to look at your phone.

A device that repeatedly requires halting your current activity seems to defeat its own purpose — namely, untethering you from your phone. It’s also strange that Vybe’s promotional clip suggests you pick up your phone while driving, which is illegal in many states — including California, where WearVybe, the bracelet’s maker, is based.

A Google smartwatch powered by Android with built-in Google Now is in the late stages of development, according to people familiar with the matter, who have been speaking to The Wall Street Journal. Google is now in talks with Asian suppliers, which could begin mass producing the device “within months.”

Samsung’s Galaxy Gear has been on sale for a number of weeks now, but today the South Korean company lifted its embargo on reviews. If you’ve been trying to decide whether or not you should spend hundreds of dollars on one, then, now’s the time to find out.

To make things a little easier for you, we’ve put together a roundup of the biggest and best reviews so you don’t have to trawl through them yourself.

We first heard that Samsung may be planning to announce its new “Galaxy Gear” smartwatch at its September 4 Galaxy Note III event earlier this month, but the rumor just got even stronger after it was confirmed by Bloomberg’s reliable sources.

They claim that the South Korean electronics giant will unveil a “wristwatch-like smartphone” powered by Android that will go head-to-head with the new Sony SmartWatch 2, and a potentially competing product from Apple, one of Samsung’s biggest rivals.

For iOS users, the Pebble Smartwatch has largely existed as an exercise in frustration. While Android users can tie the Pebble Smartwatch into their smartphone’s central nervous system in all kinds of ways, the feature set of the e-ink proto-iWatch has been comparatively worse.

Case in point? Pebble Smartwatch owners who have an iPhone in their pocket couldn’t even get email notifications on the face of their watch. That’s a big deal: getting notified of new emails is seemingly one of the big things you’d want a second screen on your wrist to do. Luckily, that’s being rectified.

Pebble has announced that its popular smartwatch has now surpassed 275,000 pre-orders, and more than 93,000 of them have been shipped since to over 150 countries since January.

The accompanying app for Android and iOS has been downloaded more than a million times, and the company has vowed to continue improving its development platform and give third-party app makers deeper access to the watch’s technology.

I know — if you see another @&#%$ post about a smartphone watch, you’re going to run screaming though the streets tearing out your hair. But bear with me, because this one’s different — and it’s got more tech packed into it than an entire region of Best Buys.

Apple is expected to launch a new smartwatch called the “iWatch” as early as this fall, and we already know that it could face competition from Samsung, Google, Microsoft, and LG. But there’s another competitor that may want a piece of the pie: Dell.

The Pebble smartwatch has just received a new software update that makes a number of improvements to notifications, tweaks the device’s user interface, and fixes numerous bugs. It also adds a new watch face called Simplicity.