Your phone and smart watch should rarely be parted, so Google’s doing something to lower the chances of that happening. The company has announced a forthcoming update to Android Wear that will add support for Android Device Manager, an app that helps you locate your phone and perform remote actions like blaring a ringer or remotely locking access to it.
To use it, you can speak into your smart watch the following command:
Ok, Google. Start. Find my phone
Or find the “find my phone” option in the start menu. It’ll start ringing your phone to allow you to find its location. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like there’s access to more advanced location features just yet, but perhaps there are plans to make that happen in the near future.
The best part is that you won’t need to deal with an OTA — Google says it’ll appear on your smart watch automatically, though it might take a few weeks to each everyone.
Yesterday, a pair of Samsung trademarks hinted that the company was finally ready to try their hand at a circular smart watch. It didn’t take long for Samsung to come out and confirm those suspicions.
The company has issued an open invitation for developers to help them build their next wearables platform ahead of launch. They’ve confirmed that it’s for the 7 generation of their Gear lineup, and while they didn’t exactly spell out the word “circular” the teaser you see above should do enough to convince you.
Developers who want to get their apps going on the upcoming watch can get started as soon as today by heading here and grabbing the SDK. Unfortunately that’s as much as we know right now as Samsung didn’t even give us an idea as to when this product might be ready for consumers. All we know is that if the Samsung Galaxy S6 is anything to go by, Samsung’s first circular Gear smart watch could turn this market on its head.
One of the biggest drawbacks of a modern smart watch is that they can’t quite live up to the battery expectations we demand. That’s why Pebble and their week-long battery is a big deal, and why people were likely disgusted at the Apple Watch’s 18-hour rating.
Oppo could change that with the smart watch they’re rumored to be working on. The company is supposedly making a smart watch that can go from 0 to 100% in just 5 minutes of charging. It might not make the battery last as long as we’d like, but to be able to top up in just 5 minutes gives us a lot more flexibility in when and how we choose to charge the thing.
The charging time will be made possible thanks to the company’s next-generation VOOC charger, a solution used for turbo charging their latest smartphones. Since smart watches naturally have much smaller batteries than smartphones then it’s not outside the realm of possibility that they can get such speedy charge times.
As much as we’re hoping this rumor is true, it is still just a rumor. For what it’s worth, we know OnePlus — a very close ally of Oppo’s — is at least thinking about the possibility of introducing a smart watch. The company sent consumer surveys asking folks what they think about wearables. OnePlus isn’t Oppo, of course, but the two share design and engineering facilities so it’s possible they could be bouncing ideas off each other.
Samsung has been the odd man out of the circular smart watch battles with LG, Motorola and even Huawei providing some pretty good options, but they could be looking to enter the fight soon. New trademarks filed by the company reveal that they’re working on a Samsung Gear W, and that it might have “Wheel UX.”
The timing of both trademarks surfacing side-by-side and the term “wheel” for its UX implies that this Samsung Gear W will be round, with a Tizen-based circular user interface customized specifically for such a form factor.
Unfortunately the trademark filings don’t give much more information on their own, but we do know Samsung has filed design patents for circular smart watches in the past. Samsung’s current smart watches — while nice — aren’t really seen as elegant, but a circular design for their next big wearable could help change that perception.
Pebble’s introduction of Smart Straps for the Pebble Time no doubt delighted technology fans everywhere, but how is Pebble going to develop public interest and incentive for developers to create them? Their answer was made clear recently: a million fund to help turn developer ideas into reality.
Pebble has issued an open call to any and all developers interested in making smart straps to put their projects up on crowdfunding platforms such as IndieGoGo and Kickstarter. They’re willing to throw money your way to help you reach your project’s funding goals and eventually get your smart strap to market.
They’ll be monitoring the popular crowdfunding sites to find projects on their own, but you can also get their attention via Twitter or devsupport@getpebble.com just in case. Pebble was quick to note that they can’t and won’t promise to fund every project that pops up, so you’ll want to make sure you have a really good idea to get them to open their wallet (and you’ll also probably want to convince them that you actually know what you’re doing, so try to have a solid plan before doing so).
That said, they have suggested they can help in other ways such as highlighting projects to give them more exposure through Kickstarter updates, social media and their website.
With that, Pebble has revealed two of the earliest smart strap concepts to have spawned. One is from Seeed Studio and their Arduino-based Xadow modules. They offer small modules for NFC readers, OLED displays, GPS and even heart rate sensors. These will be available for developers and manufacturers as development boards to use in prototyping smart straps without having to spend a ton on reiteration and R&D.
Second is a prototypical module from Spark.io that can add cellular capabilities to the Pebble Time and use it without the aid of a smartphone. The picture above obviously isn’t indicative of what a final product might look like, but the idea is very interesting and we hope they’ll be able to stuff all of that inside a strap enclosure with some good engineering work. What kind of smart straps would you like to see for Pebble Time? Sound off below!
Pebble has announced that they have started mass production on their latest smart watch, the Pebble Time. We’d love to say it’s fully great news as it means they’re on track to start shipping soon. The catch? They actually aren’t on time with their original deadline — they admitted this was a week later than they’d like to start mass producing, and that this has caused shipment estimates to move back by the same amount of time.
That said, a week isn’t a terrible delay compared to other Kickstarter projects (which we’ve seen could take another extra few months or even up to a year for the project creators to fulfill).
With today’s news comes a deeper look at the new color-filled interface, as well as a point-by-point list of features that you can expect on day one, and what’s coming soon. The video above will give you a look at how notifications, the timeline system and alerts work on Pebble Time, while the one you see below shows you how it handles weather.
Here’s that list of what’ll be ready as soon as you take out out of the box:
New timeline Interface. Review Past, Present, and Future events you care about right from your watch. Initial support includes timeline pins for calendars, sports scores, and weather.
Expanded app storage. Goodbye, 8-app limit! Pebble Time will store as many apps and faces as possible on the watch itself. When needed, an app or face not currently stored will automatically install from your Android or iOS device.
New Sports app. Keep tabs on the latest MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, NCAAF, and NCAAM scores with an official Sports app. Find which teams you want to follow to get start times, score updates, and more sent directly to your timeline.
Redesigned system apps in color. Alarms, Calendar, Music, Notifications, Sports, and Settings are all redesigned for Pebble Time’s new color e-paper display.
Voice replies to Android notifications. Dictate short replies for app notifications that allow direct text replies.
…and what’s confirmed to be on tap for future updates:
Voice response to Gmail notifications on iOS.
Voice notes app.
Stocks app.
Weather watchface.
Album art view for the Music app.
Not bad at all. Shipping will begin in the second half of this month, with many of the earliest backers starting to receive their orders in the last week of May or first week of June. Get excited!
Lenovo had a lot of interesting announcements to make at their Tech World conference in Beijing today. Let’s jump right into the first one: they have made the next big Chromecast competitor.
Simply called Lenovo Cast, this is a dongle that hooks right up to your TV via HDMI. Compare that price tag to the Chromecast (which you can often find even cheaper than that through periodic deals) and it doesn’t sound all that amazing.
But Lenovo’s pitch here is that their device is fully DLNA and Miracast compliant, meaning you have very flexible and open options for streaming to it (as opposed to Chromecast, which requires developers to add support for it within their apps). Still, there are cheaper options that allow you to do the same (and even more) already on the market so we’re reserving judgment until we see if there are any other unique and redeeming qualities. The device will be available on a worldwide scale this August.
Moving on, Lenovo did have a couple of other announcements that did well to pique our interest. First up is a smart watch that sports a secondary display, a contraption which might appear wonky in mere inner-thought visuals. In actuality, it’s integrated fairly neatly and doesn’t do much to hinder the otherwise good looks of a smart watch.
The question is about functionality and purpose, and the answer is simple: it’s for privately viewing your content. You see, you have to move the smartwatch to your eye to even see what’s on the display. Lenovo’s goal is to let you see what you need to see, and without letting anyone else see what you have to see.
We’re not sure what sort of sensitive content you’d be viewing on a smart watch to need something like this, but there it is. We’d argue covering your wrist with your hand is nearly as effective, but hey — you can’t get mad at unique ideas. Unfortunately this is little more than a concept right now, though the fact that Lenovo has working prototypes is a good sign they want to bring this thing to market.
Lastly, there’s the Smart Cast, a phone Lenovo has dreamed up with a laser projector. A projector on a phone is nothing new — the Samsung Galaxy Beam says hello — but Lenovo’s claiming that theirs can project a fully interactive display onto whichever surface you fancy. Whether it be for typing, playing a virtual piano or whatever, they’re confident they can make it happen.
The core technology already exists, though not within a consumer device such as the one they’ve shown off. Whether we can ever see something like this hit the market remains to be seen, but if Lenovo’s feeling confident enough that they’re on the right track we’ll certainly keep an open mind about it.
WWDC happened this week, and with it came a bunch of Apple-y news. iOS 9 gets a Google Now competitor, iPads get better multitasking, and Apple Music will be coming to Android. Wait, what? Yes, Apple is making an Android app. We also talk about pizza boxes, the ugly Samsung Galaxy S6 Active, smart buttons, and much more! Thanks for watching/listening!
Big News
WWDC: Siri is now proactive, iPad multitasking, native apps coming to Apple Watch
It looks like Amazon had bigger plans for Alexa than we thought. The digital voice assistant — which is the star of the show for the Amazon Echo that recently went up for pre-sale — is becoming an open platform which developers can use to add voice assistant features to their products.
They’ll do so through the use of the Alexa Skill Kit and the Alexa Voice Service, a collection of APIs and services that’ll allow you to implement Alexa in your products with ease. The Skill Kit is what will allow developers to support Alexa as if their app is one of Amazon’s own, while the Voice Service is what device makers use to implement Alexa in internet-connected hardware.
To kick things off and spur development, Amazon is also putting up a cool 0 million — called the Alexa Fund — to promote development of Alexa apps, devices and give startups the tools they need to be successful with it.
Amazon’s hope is that the end-result will be a wide range of Alexa-capable products that can make your smart home smarter than it already is, and without the need to buy their homegrown unit to do it.
Exciting times ahead indeed, and we can’t wait to see what comes of it. You can take a look at our Amazon Echo review to learn more about Alexa and how it can help you stay on task and up to date on everything in life.
Smart Lock was one of the more noteworthy new features that debuted in Android 5.0 Lollipop. Adopting an idea we only saw in Motorola devices prior to Lollipop, Smart Lock is simply a convenient way to keep your Android device unlocked when it’s safe, and locked when it’s not. The feature is so important, Google even created a dedicated landing page to talk all about it. What they didn’t notice, however, is one of the featured images created for the page is actually a Nexus 6 running Windows Phone. Oops.
Now, we’re not going to run with some sort of conspiracy theory that Google will introduce a dual-boot option for the Nexus 6 in the near future. This is simply a designer faux pas in which he used the wrong Netflix screen shot when putting together the image. It’s not the first time we’ve seen a slip up, with the world going nuts over a Nexus Tablet once believed to be the Nexus 8 (the image was later tweaked to reflect the Nexus 7 2013).
Nothing too big, just kind of funny that you can find Nexus 6 running Windows Phone on one of Google’s official web pages. Ha.
