Tag: smartwatches

Time travel through 2010s technology: Part 1

We are now close to the end of an important decade for technology, a decade that started without many of the innovations that today we consider part of the norm. Artificial intelligence at home, self-driving cars, wearable devices, supercomputers in our pockets… the 2010s not only changed the technology we use, but also how we communicate and think. Privacy has never been so critical as a selling point, and information bubbles have never been so polarizing. Today, we are at a turning point in the tech industry; it’s not clear what’s going to be the next revolutionary tech segment, or how companies are going to keep convincing customers to upgrade their various devices.

So what happened in the last ten years? How did we get here? The following areas have experienced substantial changes since 2010, making our lives considerably better in some cases, while taking a few surprising turns in some others. This is the first of a series of two posts that take a look back at a decade of tech evolution.

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How to revive a Pebble watch in 2018

I sold my 1st generation Apple Watch a few weeks ago. Since it was right before Apple’s event, I thought it would be fun to revive my Pebble watch and use it with my iPhone while I waited for the Series 4. The thing is, Pebble was acquired by Fitbit in 2016 and stopped giving support to these old devices earlier this year. After a bit of research, I discovered the light at the end of the tunnel; here’s how I brought a Pebble watch back to life in 2018.

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3 things I didn’t know about the Apple Watch

After one week wearing the Apple Watch, I can reaffirm my comments on why I believe it will be a success. It may not be the first smartwatch to reach the market, nor the most complete in terms of features, but one thing is clear: Apple has done what it does best, create a simple but delightful experience with a product category that other competitors have already tried mastering.

I had read tons of articles and reviews before getting an Apple Watch of my own, and yet this first week I discovered a few things, good and bad, that surprised me. These are the top 3:

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Why the Apple Watch will be a success

Apple announced during its last earnings report that it sold 74.5 million iPhone units in 2015’s first fiscal quarter. Let that number settle in.

As CNN Money wrote, that means “34,000 iPhones sold every hour, every day, every week of the past three months. That’s 9 iPhones every second.”

But that’s not it, Apple also sold 51 million iPhones only in 2014’s first fiscal quarter, and 47.8 million units the year before, which means that there are over 170 million potential customers for the Apple Watch.

Now, I know that doesn’t mean every iPhone user will get an Apple Watch, especially since smartwatches sales are having a rough start (only 720,000 Android Wear smartwatches were shipped in 2014). There are, however, 2 points that I believe will make a difference in Apple’s case.

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I bought a smartwatch as an experiment, and I liked it

Smartwatch sales are set to explode by 2020, according to a NextMarket Insights report from 2013. And according to a more recent CCS Insight’s global forecast, “by 2018 over 250 million smart wearables will be in use, 14 times more than in 2013.”

That’s a lot of people and a lot of wearables. What will these gadgets do? A lot of things apparently:

Let’s reflect on one aspect: “50% of wearables sold by 2018 will be smartwatches.” That’s impressive, considering that most people today don’t even know what to do with a smartwatch. The cultural change is going to be massive.

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Wearables are not for everyone

Tell me, do you find interesting a watch that monitors your blood glucose levels or your heartbeats? I don’t. Sure, I’d be interested in knowing how it works but, would I buy one just because of that? No.

Since all the rumors of the iWatch started, I got really excited about the possibilities. I imagined a light wristband that I could use to talk to Siri and check my phone notifications without taking it out of my pocket. Now all I hear about is sleep patterns, glucose levels and heartbeats. Not my cup of tea.

Don’t get me wrong, I like activity trackers, I own a Fitbit One after all. But its gamification factor is what actually caught my attention. If it was all about accounting for my daily steps, I would have already stopped using it, but competing with my friends makes the whole experience a new one each day. I completely agree with Alvaro that smart sensors are the future: little gadgets making our lives easier, more productive or even more fun, is the next big thing.

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