14 DAY TRIAL // Everybody present at MWC 2014 has probably noticed a trend developing on the grounds in Barcelona. First off, there was a plethora of LTE-enhanced devices and LTE-capable chips being unveiled at the event. Secondly, we saw a lot, but a lot, of smartwatches and other wearable technology, including health trackers and what not.
The devices typically work in concert with a smartphone and are capable of exchanging information from your wrist to your handset and vice-versa wirelessly. But what if you could sync that information directly to a Chrome OS device?
That’s exactly the question Google’s François Beaufort is indirectly answering in his new Google+ post. Basically, smartwatches and wearable health gadgets that go around your wrist send data to the cloud via Bluetooth to a mobile device.
But since Chromium (the open source browser platform underlying Chrome OS) is now qualified as a Host Subsystem for Bluetooth 4.0 and Low Energy, the scenario where you can sync your Chromebook to your smartwatch has a real chance of happening.
Beaufort goes on to explain, Chrome devices will supporting the new Bluetooth standards. The very standards which are used by the new wearables to communicate.
Naturally, for this to be a viable scenario, the Chromebook will have to be powered by the right chip. His should be a big problem, since not many new laptops come without Bluetooth these days. For example, the Chromebook Pixel only boasts Bluetooth 3.0, but the newer HP Chromebook 11 and Toshiba Chromebook 13 both boasts Bluetooth 4.0 chips.