Wearable Technology
Is it here to stay?
One of the biggest trends of this year has been wearable technology. Now of course forms of wearable technology have been around for a few years, I remember when I was in the 7th grade and my friend showed up to school with a gargantuan watch on his wrist that could make calls, take photos, send texts and even watch live TV. This “trend” however went unnoticed to the general consumers until this year. Even the geek-loved “Pebble Smartwatch” that received 10,266% of its intended target in funding on kickstarter, has mostly just been something us tech aficionados know about.
Wearable technology began infiltrating the consumer market early this year when more and more people began hearing about Google Glass. That’s not to say everyone was for the idea, most people that I spoke to (who weren't “technology savvy” per say) were quite repulsed by the idea of having something on your face, always listening to you, showing you things. Then rumors began spreading of Apple building their own smartwatch, that made a noise. Within weeks of the first rumor that surfaced the general public was already talking about it. I would be walking around the most common places like parks and malls when I would hear statements like “oh no I think I’ll get the iPhone instead of that Samsung thingy so that I can use it with my iWatch” and “OMG my daddy already said he would get me the iWatch for my birthday.”
Only rumors and immediately people of all ages and backgrounds were already talking about it, claiming it would be the next big thing. Picking up on all this chatter and hype, Samsung decided to make their own smartwatch and bring it to market even before Apple could. The Galaxy Gear made it’s appearance along side the Galaxy Note 3 to mostly mediocre reviews from critics and reviewers and with much reasoning as well. The interface is slow and laggy, since it’s an LCD the display isn’t always on, you would have to charge it every single night and there were a lot more drawbacks to the list. Sure there were a few pro’s like the ability to view certain notifications and make calls without having to pull your phone about your pocket but even those features were poorly implemented to say the least. Qualcomm to took a shot at the wearable sector with it’s “Toq” smartwatch which again had the right ideas but still didn't have much appeal to it. As Chris Ziegler of the verge puts it, its “A killer proof of concept, but not a killer product”.
Ultimately, is wearable technology going to last or is it just a passing trend? I remember wanting a smartwatch ever since I watched the first Spy Kids movie and the very idea of being able to control my phone with my watch gets me so excited but at the end of the day it’s unclear whether it will even be that useful. I hardly ever wear a watch now days because I hate having something on my wrist when I’m typing on the computer as it interferes and most of the time when I go out I forget to put on a watch out of pure laziness. In fact, I think that what Motorola did with their glanceable notifications feature on the Moto X could be equally as useful if not more useful than being able to view notifications on my wrist, but that’s just my opinion. In the end, it is hard to tell whether wearable tech is going to be here to stay or whether we’ll be putting it in a coffin in a few years time but we sure do have an interesting couple of years ahead of us nonetheless.