Wearable Computing & Fashion

Casio is a Japanese brand with a long history of creating iconic analog and digital watches. In 1974, the company released the first wristwatch with an LCD. In 1980, it released its revolutionary calculator watch, followed up in 1984 with a watch with enough memory to store up to 10 phone numbers. And to celebrate 50 years of creating digital timepieces, Casio is releasing a digital smart ring watch that draws inspiration from its classic watches.

With a tiny LCD screen that can display hours, minutes, seconds, and the current timezone or act as a stopwatch, it's like a micro Casio watch for your finger. The casing and bezel are made from polished stainless steel, which even mimics the flexible wristband look of a classic silver-colored Casio watch from the 1980s.

It's a fantastic retro wearable that will undoubtedly be one of those things you either immediately fall in love with or brush off as silly and pointless. I fall into the former category; I've always thought Casio watches looked cool - even in calculator form.

Amazon is reportedly working on a pair of smart glasses designed specifically for delivery drivers, as the company is looking for a method to reduce the time it takes for a delivery to reach its destination.

The unannounced project comes from Reuters in an exclusive report that cites people familiar with the project who spoke under the condition of anonymity due to the project's confidential nature. According to the report, the new smart glasses are designed to assist drivers with the final stretch of the delivery journey, the steps taken from the courier vehicle to the customer's door. While this may sound like the simplest part of the journey, it's actually a major concern of Amazon's as there are many things that can occur during this period that can result in delays that stack up over the course of a day.

Amazon's delivery smart glasses would provide drivers with turn-by-turn navigation on a small embedded screen. The heads-up display (HUD) would inform drivers of their route and each stop within the screen. An example of this would be a driver being required to go up an elevator. The glasses would be able to provide left and right directions for the driver once the elevator doors open to the correct level. Additionally, the glasses would be able to navigate drivers around obstacles such as gates, fences, and even aggressive dogs.

A new report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, a known Apple insider and industry analyst, claims the Cupertino company is working on a new health app designed to monitor blood sugar levels.

According to Gurman's trusted Apple employees were given access to the new application that was described as "highly secretive". This new application was also described as a food-logging app, and Apple selected some employees who were prediabetics, requiring them to submit their blood sugar measurements and food intake. Presumably, the logging of the food will inform the user when their blood sugar levels are spiking/crashing.

Ideally, Apple wants to be able to create a noninvasive method of monitoring blood sugar levels, and according to Gurman, the company has been working on it for more than 10 years. However, it's reportedly not ready as Apple is suffering from issues with shrinking the size of the monitor while also keeping it operational without overheating.

Meta has just released a new pair of AI-powered sunglasses with Ray-Ban, and now we have an idea of what Meta plans on doing with the images and videos captured by the glasses.

For those who don't know, Meta's AI-powered Ray-Bans have a camera located in front of the glasses. The camera can be used for taking photos and video, but it can also be enabled when the user initiates an AI feature through saying a keyword such as "look" and then requesting Meta AI to analyze what the wearer is seeing and provide an answer. An example of this would be looking at a mountain and asking MetaAI what the name of that mountain is its height.

When prompted, the Meta Ray-Bans will then capture a selection of images that will be scanned by MetaAI, and the answer will be read out loud to the wearer via the speakers. However, what happens to the captured images? TechCrunch queried Meta on this and discovered the company was being cagey about the process of using captured images and video, but since then it has provided more clarity.

Tech companies have pushed for many years for smart glasses to become everyday items at the same level as smartphones, but unfortunately, the technology just doesn't seem there yet, or at least not at the level where everyone is walking around with a version of Tony Stark's sunglasses.

Despite the pushback from the public at the mass adoption of devices such as Google Glass or, even more recently, Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses, this hasn't stopped tech companies from investing millions of dollars into various forms of smart glasses research and development. Now, a new partnership has been unveiled between three heavy hitters in the space, Qualcomm, Google, and Samsung - all of which have their own expertise in various forms of hardware and software.

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon spoke to CNBC and revealed the company has partnered with Google and Samsung to create a brand new product that will explore mixed reality in a set of glasses, and these glasses will be linked to a smartphone. For those who don't know, mixed reality involves the device imposing digital images on top of the real world, versus virtual reality, which completely immerses a user in a virtual world.

Samsung's Galaxy Watch is one of the more well-known pieces of fashionable wearable tech. It offers a suite of smart features that tie into Samsung's smartphone ecosystem with additional wellbeing and health-oriented features. Today marks the addition of a brand-new Samsung wearable device - the new Galaxy Ring. This is the first 'smart ring' from Samsung or big tech companies.

As a ring on your finger, it does not have a display or otherwise clearly visible smart functionality or feature set. So, what's it all about? Health and wellbeing, with 24/7 monitoring and tracking that integrates seamlessly with the Samsung Health platform. And it's lightweight, too, weighing between 2.3 and 3 grams, depending on the size.

"Galaxy Ring delivers a straight-forward approach to wellness, offering health monitoring, tracking, and personalized insights while worn comfortably on a finger, even while asleep," Samsung writes in the announcement.

Auctioning off historical pieces of Apple technology can be big business - earlier this year, we reported on a first-generation iPhone with 4GB of storage selling for over $130,000 at an auction. However, if you think it stops at vintage Apple silicon, think again - anything related to Steve Jobs and Apple is worth a lot of money.

Even the clothing he wore to work, out on the town, and to photo shoots. Julien's Auctions in California is currently listing several clothing items worn by Steve Jobs, including this 'navy blue pin-striped Brioni for Wilkes Bashford suit' that he wore for an ad or photo shoot commemorating the release of the original Macintosh in 1984. It includes the original wooden hanger and a 'vintage Apple Macintosh pin' found in one of the pockets

Bidding is now open for the item, and the estimate is that this old and possibly musty-smelling suit from the 1980s will sell for between $20,000 and $30,000.

Apple regularly releases special Apple Watch faces, bands, and other accessories to celebrate specific communities and the latest Pride watch face is a great addition to the mix. It was announced alongside the stunning Apple Watch Pride Edition Braided Solo Loop which will be available to order on May 22, but you won't have to wait that long to get the watch face - it's available right now.

The new watch face is part of watchOS 10.5 software update that Apple has today made available for download and it also happens to be the only new feature that was confirmed via the update's release notes. Apple calls it the Pride Radiance watch face and says it's to honor the LGBTQ+ community and culture.

The update, which is free for owners of all compatible Apple Watches, can be downloaded via the Watch app on the iPhone. Alongside the new watch face, the update also brings with it a number of bug fixes and other improvements, although Apple's release notes did not go into details as to what they were.

2024 marks the tenth year of the Apple Watch, a wearable that first launched in 2014 and has become a huge global hit. Just as it did with the iPhone X in 2017, it's thought that Apple may choose to release an Apple Watch X to celebrate the decade of Apple wearables, and if it does, we could be in for something interesting.

Details for what the Apple Watch X will actually offer customers are hard to come by but Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has previously suggested that it will be the wearable's biggest overhaul to date. With that in mind, we think we would be pretty happy if Apple released this concept.

Designer Lukas Gehrer from the German design agency Wordsmattr shared details of his concept with 9to5Mac and it definitely has plenty for us to get excited about. The concept looks similar to the Apple Watch Ultra in some ways but it's thinner with curved edges that aren't quite flat but are much less bulbous than the Apple Watch Series 9 and previous non-Ultra models.

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 has been on sale since September of last year and that came a year after the original Apple Watch Ulta went on sale. With that in mind, it doesn't take too much figuring out to assume that Apple will also update the Apple Watch Ultra 2 to something new this coming September, although it remains to be seen whether it winds up being called the Apple Watch Ultra 3. Whatever title Apple gives it, we've been told not to expect too much from the refreshed wearable.

That's because supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes that Apple isn't going to bring any big new hardware upgrades to the Apple Watch Ultra 3, meaning anyone who already has the Apple Watch Ultra 2 might not want to upgrade this year. However, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 wasn't a huge upgrade over the Apple Watch Ultra either, so it's unclear what kind of differentiation Apple will offer this time out.

This bombshell comes via a MacRumors report which cites Kuo having received a direct message from the analyst. Kuo says that while the Apple Watch Ultra will indeed be updated to receive a new model this fall, he believes that almost no hardware upgrades will be offered compared to the Apple Watch Ultra 2 model. However, he did not reveal any specific plans for the Apple Watch Ultra 3, so it's unclear which changes he expects to be part of the new model's unveiling.