With Apple’s launch of the Apple Watch in 2015, there was finally a product that could replace the need for both watches and fitness trackers. With this watch, and the numerous smartwatches that have come out since, the wearables market has skyrocketed. Smartwatches are undoubtedly the most popular kind of fitness device, and although every device has the potential to be a fitness tracker, unlike other devices like fitness bands, they are less noticeable when one is out and about. With the increased variety in different models, and in some cases, no need for Bluetooth earbuds, smartwatches have expanded to a multitude of purposes. What is most intriguing is the new relationship between wearable technology and its quick adoption in parallel to the earth’s increased state of technological dependency.
These assistive robots, whether they appear as bedazzled bionics or not, tend to bear uncanny resemblances to their performance progress counterparts. These progress counterparts are increasingly becoming our standard. Through our ongoing efforts to mirror the growth model computer, we have given rise to the most humanized development known — Robot evolution. These new bionic beings can rise on two weary legs, giving them a distinct look that pays homage to their newfound preprocessors. Their visual improvements are starkly noticeable for one compelling reason: They are really cool looking. Technologies enabled robots tend to be covered head-to-toe in the latest advancements. Just as progress has perpetuated itself in each model of the computer, so too has the robot closely followed, needlessly accumulating wear. This hyper appearance combined with new assistive and perceptive abilities make way for a pallet of applicational advancements.
Convenience and Efficiency
Imagine being able to stay up to date with everyday wearables without needing to take your smartphone out every time. A smartwatch can plug in your smartphone notifications like calls, texts, and more when your smartphone isn’t easily accessible. Smartwatches nowadays also offer the ability to reply to emails or texts in an instant in cases where using your smartphone isn’t possible.
Smartwatches also come with great personalization options and can help you organize and structure your digital life much more efficiently. Personalized watch faces can be switched around in a matter of seconds and can give your wrist a different feel every time. Can’t find your phone? Smartwatches have multiple phone finding options so you’ll save time every time you misplace it. Smartwatches nowadays can also store boarding passes and, in some cases, make contactless payments much faster than searching through your bag.
Health awareness and motivation are important aspects of someone’s life, and smartwatches do well to increase both of these aspects. They can greatly increase your workout efficiency and can also monitor your progress and calculate and recommend a healthier and more active lifestyle. Smartwatches are equipped with pedometers which keep track of your daily activity – how much you’ve walked, run, etc. These also motivate you to reach those running goals and stay on track. It increases your awareness of your own health and can give you insights and recommendations to help you reach your fitness goals. Some smartwatches can also invoke the help of different health features like heart rate monitors – the greatest feature to monitor an increase in your heart rate, calorie counters, etc. These features can also recommend a healthy routine that’s best based on this data. Smartwatches also come with different workout apps and features that will aid you in different areas like swimming, running, weight training, etc. Some smartwatches can also help with recovery and monitoring to decrease how long it takes to recover from training effectively.
Notifications and Alerts
Notifications and alerts are perhaps some of the most valuable and frequently used features of the smartwatch. If you are like most people, then you have your mobile phone’s notifications turned on at all times. We are constantly bombarded with SMS or messenger alerts, social media updates, emails, app notifications, and weather alerts, all of which have a way of distracting us and stealing our focus. The smartwatch works as a filter, a second screen for your essential and priority notifications. Instead of checking your phone every 30 seconds, cause it either vibrated or pinged, stop checking it and direct your focus into your immediate and present task at hand. The smartwatch is an excellent productivity and time management tool as a result.
The notification system is also convenient. You don’t have to carry your phone around with you throughout your house or work at home. Accidentally leave your phone in another room or on the other side of the office? No problem, your wrist will alert you so you don’t miss that important SMS, mail, call, app, or calendar notification. As the smartwatch is cordless, it’s the perfect device for alerting you to stuff while working out outdoors. You also don’t have to worry about it falling out of a pocket either since it’s strapped to your wrist.
Health and Fitness Tracking
Users can expect that smartwatches are capable of some form of step-tracking and calories tracking. However, it is common for the capabilities to be understated. The truth is that the smartwatch is capable of so much more. In addition to calories and steps, smartwatches make use of health apps like proponents and heart-rate monitors. Smartwatches are becoming more capable with the increase in the number of sensors that manufacturers are adding to smartwatches. We now have smartwatches that are capable of detecting blood-oxygen levels in addition to sleep monitoring and health notifications. The implications for fitness instructors are that they no longer have to make use of chest straps that feel uncomfortable to get heart rates from their clients. They only need to manage their clients’ smartwatches to get the same data.
Some smartwatches are capable of detecting an irregular heart rhythm. With this feature, the smartwatch will sequence an ECG (electrocardiogram) in real-time when subjected to the wearer through the heart-rate monitor. This is an example of getting hospital-grade capabilities from a device that was traditionally used for displaying notifications. The irregular heart rhythm detection capabilities have even saved the lives of many who did not have any idea that the medical condition existed. Some smartwatches can detect indicators that cannot be detected by home devices, for example out of 1% of smartwatch wearers being alerted to high heart rate notifications, 0.5% were later diagnosed with sleep apnea. According to Research2Guidance, 53% of fitness app users say they’ll be very interested in using a smartwatch.
Customization and Personalization
Let us now move on to the next, and rather major, point. While this might not be true for all smartwatches out there, I will make a bold statement and say that this generation of Android Wear smartwatches certainly boasts a level of customization and personalization that I have not seen before. It is certainly a very exciting time to be a smartwatch owner with this new generation. One of the biggest and most enjoyable things I liked about owning a smartphone in its later years is that you can literally choose how you want to use the device, and extend your smartphone experience almost any way you wanted to.
User-facing home launchers can be switched almost in seconds, icon packs can be applied in literally one tap of a button, and custom ROMs provide the ultimate in personalized experiences. All of this happens right from the palm of your hand, usually without you having to remove your phone from your pocket. They were already powerful devices to begin with and customization was just the icing on the cake, but the fact that I could take the phone out of the box and within 30 minutes have it effectively looking exactly like I wanted and doing almost exactly what I wanted is what made the difference between me choosing one phone over another. In almost the same way, I feel that the one-size fits all needs to be a thing of the past. With an ever-increasing emphasis on making technology suit every aspect of the customer’s lives, from solutions for the home and everyday appliances to how people interact with each other, it’s no wonder that smartwatches are expected to communicate the same message. It provides almost a very microcosm of the smartphone experience, where users can almost customize to the great lengths of their wrist.
Most of smartwatches’ emphasis goes into the fact that they look good and tracking someone’s health is limited to that feature. Yes, there are plenty of custom faces that have been designed to help users express their individual tastes, but mass customization should be both about aesthetics and how the device should fit the most intimate part of someone’s life. Users can own a smartwatch that is designed just for their specific workouts, while someone else can serve as a handy companion for the frequent international traveler, or a fitness monitor for the health obsessed. It’s a way for users to personalize the millions of choices they make daily, and that should extend to their accessories. The idea of being able to extend a gadget’s physical appeal and hardware capabilities through a multitude amount of design options is an extension of a theory used within sold products. Configuring the purchase of a new car or bike is a process that a lot of people become invested in, shaping the physical object to reflect an aspect of their lifestyle. While the customization process should reflect an extra layer of the user’s life, owning a smartwatch that is an extension of that life is a process where you can truly be in charge, and why look all around for a product that represents who you are when the answer will be always in front of you?
Technological Features
Smartwatches vary a good bit in features and price. Some smartwatches will measure some health data for you without you lifting a finger. Some smartwatches are even stylish and resemble high-end standard watches. You also can often respond to messages, even make calls with a smartwatch, all while your smartphone stays in a pocket or purse. Smartwatches can almost replace a smartphone, however, the battery is much smaller in a smartwatch. The smaller battery, along with additional features, such as the heart rate sensor and processor, begin to place requirements on the watch and its battery life. Because of this, in order to accomplish all of the above functionality, the watch often sacrifices battery life and must be recharged every two to three days.
Currently, there are clones of knock-off smartwatches, which are just about worthless, and from shady manufacturers. When you purchase a smartwatch, the brand, known security, and updates are the most important things in smartwatch purchasing. Case in point, if you are purchasing a smartwatch with no updates from a knockoff company, you might not have a smartwatch in comparison to Samsung, Apple, or a known security smartwatch provider in one week. This is just the way technology, security, and secure software is today.
Voice Control
Through Apple’s Siri, smartphone and smartwatch owners must treat voice activation as a priceless feature. It’s an experienced individual and business enabler. With Siri, reminders can be planned, meetings rescheduled, and emails can be sent. Also, with Siri, smartwatch owners can dictate and write, which is considerably more secure for the elderly and visually disabled than attempting to use a keypad. This is particularly the case with very simple mobile phone programmable entities. The integration of Siri allows you to easily call or text family members, set a reminder, play music, and schedule appointments.
When compared to those from virtually everyone else since that time, Apple’s 4th version of the Watch operating system has proven to be cutting edge. However, when it was released, Android Wear’s voice command was not linked to Google voice call home assistants. Yes, it has been a long time since the thermostat system was controlled and the security system could have been managed with an Android Wear watch. This could hamper the integration of the Android Wear app consequently. However, it is just a suggestion. Due to errors, security and monitoring devices must be based. Creating a WatchOS or GearOS third type for safety, heating and cooling, and overall “control” might probably be unfortunate errors.
GPS and Navigation
Even though most people use their smartphones to get directions, it’s much easier to use a smartwatch to directly input your destination into a navigation app and then simply raise your wrist and get a turn-by-turn directive from the watch. What’s more, if you are walking or biking, it’s much safer to get directions from your watch than from your phone. If you’re biking, it’s not even safe to listen to audio instructions. Smartwatches with built-in GPS are wonderful for runners who want to track and share the location they ran. These watches can be quite expensive, however. Some smartwatches use information from both GPS, which is short for Global Positioning System, and GLONASS (Globalnaya Navigazionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema) to pinpoint your location on the globe. GLONASS is a Russian satellite navigation system that works in much the same way as GPS. By using both U.S. and Russian systems, you can track your location more accurately, especially in urban areas or dense woods area where buildings or trees can interfere with GPS operation.
One of the most useful features of both the smartwatch is the ability to display directions on your wrist through a Bluetooth connection between your watch and a smartphone. Since a smartwatch is shipped with Wi-Fi and cellular capabilities, these watches can show your location almost anyplace in the world — just as long as there’s an internet connection available. Some watches use Near Field Communication or NFC rather than Bluetooth to connect to a smartphone. NFC is a wireless communication protocol that can temporarily establish a two-way connection between supported watches and phones. Conducting or accepting contactless transactions is a much more popular usage of NFC. The most important benefit of NFC is that it keeps your banking details secret from view.
Style and Fashion
Style and fashion will clearly come into play. A smartwatch can add significant flare to an outfit, acting as a fashion statement and extension of personal style. These digital timepieces run the gamut when it comes to design, with a plethora of screen sizes, shapes, bands, colors, and materials to choose from. Hard glasses on the front or intricate metal bands on the back to host sensors can please designer eyes. The price of owning a fashion-forward device can be painful on a budget, but wearers won’t need to own ten different timepieces or styles of watches that serve niche purposes. With a smartwatch, anyone can look cool and trendy due to digital flexibility.
In the same vein, a smartwatch can be beneficial solely due to style and fashion. While the technological benefits of a smartwatch may well disguise its role as a fashionable wearable tech device, it’s difficult to deny that personal style and societal function still play a role. With so many styles to choose from, including metallic and leather bands, fashion designers and users alike understand that smartwatches can be accessories or pieces of jewelry. The ability to swap watch faces and bands on the fly allows wearers to easily switch up their styles through their phones or smartwatch applications. While the wearables may be comprised of smart technology, many consumers purchase them for the same reasons that they traditionally bought watches: fashion and the desire to stylize!
For a high-tech way to stay connected, keep you organized, and help you stay active, consider purchasing a smartwatch. With benefits like heart rate monitoring, call screening, automatic activity tracking, and the ability to sync with other smart devices, it’s the perfect answer to giving your phone a break. Not only that, but the smartwatch can also provide wearers with aid in emergencies, peace of mind, and beauty. Keep up with your health at a glance or even keep other people updated on your location for your safety. Plus, they look super stylish!
While the trendy variety of wearables is huge, it’s clear that smartwatches come with many different benefits that make them a must-have for the modern world. If you are in the market for a user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing technology that can handle your fitness and life-management needs, we highly recommend purchasing a smartwatch. With the internet, camera, calling, and map capabilities of a phone in a sleek and convenient format, wearable watch technology is perfect for people on the go, trend-lovers, and anyone who wants to stay on top of their health. Now no matter your activities, conditions, or needs, you can keep focused, safe, and engaged with the help of a smartwatch.