Wearable Computing & Fashion News - Page 37

Sony's third-generation personal 3D viewing headset, the HMZ-T3W, is now available for pre-order. If you want to grab the Sony HMZ-T3W, you'll need to pre-order it directly from Sony's website, or in retail Sony stores.

The HMZ-T3W features wireless connectivity this time around, instead of wrapping yourself in cords, and some nifty dual OLED monitors that Sony state simulate the feeling of sitting 65 feet away from a gigantic 750-inch display. The HMZ-T3W is capable of streaming content from up to 7 meters away from the source.

The third-generation model no longer requires an AC power socket, as you can take a portable battery pack around with you which will share power with connected smartphones and tablets. The portable battery should be good for around three hours of wireless use, or up to 7 hours if you use it over HDMI. If you are looking at picking one of these up, you'll be hit up for $999.

Apple seems far behind the wearable devices game, with a bunch of its competitors unveiling wearable devices, mainly Samsung's Galaxy Gear and heck, even the Galaxy Gear 2 is being teased already. This isn't even considering the awesome Omate TrueSmart, either and all before Apple has its first-gen device on our wrists.

Now we have a report that states Apple has scooped up one of Nike's top design directors, who will work on wearable devices for the company. Ben Shaffer was Nike's Studio Director of Innovation Kitchen, which might sound weird, but it's actually Nike's R&D arm that is responsible for products like the Nike FuelBand, which is a favorite of Apple's executives.

Shaffer will most likely begin working on the rumored iWatch, but the latest rumors peg it to be released late next year after some engineering problems.

Today, Garmin announced the launch of two new items to its Forerunner line of GPS smartwatches. The new Forerunner GPS 220 and GPS 610 running watches take Garmin's involvement in wearable technology to an entirely new level.

Both of these wearable GPS's act as a personal coach by alerting you of your distance traveled, lap times, and even recovery times needed before attempting another strenuous run. Both models feature color screens, with the 620 being touch-enabled. The 620 also predicts your race time and gives you personalized oxygen consumption estimates. When combined with Garmin's HRM-Run technology, the 620 is able to measure how long your foot is on the ground rather than in-flight, which lets you compare your time per step to previous events.

"Whether running indoors or out, Forerunner 620 and 220 will change the way runners look at training," said Dan Bartel, Garmin vice president of worldwide sales. "Advanced features in the 620 such as recovery advisor, VO2 max estimate, race predictor and stats on running economy, combined with connected features and training plan options found in both the 620 and 220, make these watches must haves for runners of all levels. To keep runners motivated the watches also notice if runners hit any personal records on that run, like their fastest mile, 5k, 10k, half or full marathon or their longest run to date."

Omate seems to be doing quite well on Kickstarter for its TrueSmart smartwatch, requiring $100,000 of funding. But, Omate has hit a home run with its 'Smartwatch 2.0' pulling in (at the time of writing) $744,499 of funding with 7 days left to go.

We thought we'd get in contact with them and ask them a few questions about its upcoming 3G-capable TrueSmart device.

Q: Who is Omate?

Qualcomm has just stepped into the smartwatch game, announcing its Toq smartwatch at its Qualcomm Uplinq 2013 conference. Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs announced the smarwatch, which featured a Mirasol color screen that can be viewed outdoors in bright sunlight.

Toq features wireless charging capabilities through WiPower LE, which is a nice touch. Qualcomm's Toq will display notifications, and it should feature applications of its own. The Toq can also control music playback and play locally to wireless headsets, but it's also capable of screening calls and showing a bunch of different watchfaces.

Qualcomm does it a bit different with Toq and its Mirasol display, which never turns off. Even with it never turning off, Toq can last multiple days between charge. Qualcomm will release a limited amount of Toq smartwatches in the next couple of weeks, with stock building up in the coming weeks.

We're just days away from Samsung unleashing its Galaxy Gear smartwatch to the world at IFA, but Venture Beat has had a quick look at the upcoming Galaxy Gear smartwatch ahead of the ev ent.

One of VB's sources showed them a prototype of the Galaxy Gear, a prototype which was sent to developers and a few close partners of Samsung. Keep in mind that because this is a prototype, and Samsung of course has high levels of security around its smartwatch, that this won't be the final design of the Galaxy Gear, but it'll be awfully close.

Samsung's Galaxy Gear smartwatch is part smart device, part fashion accessory, part camera and a health monitor. It features Bluetooth that will connect with all of Samsung's Galaxy S family of devices, but we might see it capable of connecting with all Android-based devices too. The Galaxy Gear also features Wi-Fi, allowing it to connect to the Internet and check your e-mail.

An Ohio-based surgeon has used Google Glass to live stream a knee surgery to his colleagues, a great demonstration on how the wearable device would change the medical world as we know it.

Dr. Christopher Kaeding, a surgeon at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, was performing knee surgery on a 47-year-old patient's injured knee ligament using Glass. Kaeding wore Google Glass during his procedure in order to show his live point-of-view to people at a remote location. His colleagues and several medical students watched the surgery, live, and from Kaeding's point-of-view from different locations within Columbus, Ohio.

Kaeding said in a news release: "To be honest, once we got into the surgery, I often forgot the device was there. It just seemed very intuitive and fit seamlessly." Glass' potential for the medical world goes far beyond the operating theater, as it can be used for remote observation and collaboration with colleagues anywhere in the world.

Earlier this morning I covered a new leak that showed off the Android app that is said to control Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Gear smartwatch. Now, additional details of leaked surrounding the device's hardware, and what kind of battery life users can expect to see. This morning GigaOm is reporting that the galaxy gear will have up to 10 hours of battery life.

Additionally the smartwatch is said to feature a 320 x 320 pixel, 2.5-inch OLED display alongside 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage. Rumors are also circling that the Galaxy Gear will feature a 4-megapixel camera that is capable of shooting 720p video. Finally the Gear will run a version of Android 4.2 and as we saw earlier will pair with other Galaxy devices using near field communication (NFC). The gear will launch next week on September 4th at the IFA trade show in Berlin Germany.

Omate has just popped up onto the tech industry radar with TrueSmart, which is a "truly standalone water-resistant smartwatch." Omate has taken to Kickstarter to fund the wearable device, which is capable of working independently from your smartphone, as it features 3G capabilities, as well as voice and gesture controls.

The biggest ticket is that the TrueSmart smartwatch is water-resistant, which is perfect for those who would be in the rain, or would wear the watch in the shower for example. It has more functions than most smartwatches, such as a watch, phone, camera, GPS, notifications, Android apps, LBS tracker, SOS device, monitoring and much more.

The Omate SmartWatch will cost around $179 by the looks of its Kickstarter page, and required a goal of $100,000 worth of funding. They've smashed through this with 1,123 backers at the time of writing, and $218,477 in funding so far with a huge 28 days to go.

In a little over two weeks from now, Samsung will unveil its Galaxy Gear smartwatch at its Unpacked event being held at the IFA 2013 conference in Berlin, Germany. Today, thanks to website GigaOm, we now have an idea of what hardware the Galaxy Gear will feature.

The report states that Samsung has managed to cram a 2.5-inch flexible OLED screen, a dual-core processor, and an unknown amount of RAM into the small wrist package. The report says that "decent" battery life can be expected from a lithium-based battery and that a camera alongside speakers will be embedded into the device's wrist strap. Other sensors rumored to be on board include an accelerometer, a gyroscope, Bluetooth 4.0, and some form of gesture support.

The report went on to say that Samsung will offer incentives to developers to offer apps for the smartwatch through its proprietary app store rather than posting them on Google Play. Over the last few weeks, I've done a lot of thinking about smart watches, and while I feel that there definitely cool, I honestly see them as a passing fad. By this time next year or the year after, I suspect we will look back and wonder why we all spent so much money on smart watches.