14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung is attacking the wearable category big time. After introducing the Gear 2, Gear 2 Neo and Gear Fit a few months ago, the tech giant has been rumored to be working on multiple new smartwatch products.
Now, the company has launched Simband, a platform for wearable devices that’s meant to monitor your health in real life.
Samsung is not only looking to become top dog in the smartwatch market by bringing out models with atypical features (like the round watch with finger-based gestures we saw detailed in a patent not so long ago), but is also looking to take the fitness-band market by storm with products that are to be differentiated from the likes of Fitbit and even’s Samsung’s own Gear Fit.
The Korean tech giant has been demoing the platform at an event in San Francisco this week, showing a system capable of monitoring vital stats in real-time.
Apparently, users won’t even have to take the wearable off anymore, because the device has an ingenious battery that can be clipped into the strap and pump the necessary life juice when needed. Although we don’t know how attractive the idea of having something permanently strapped to your wrist is.
The system has been dubbed the “Shuttle” battery system, which allows the power-pump to be clipped to the wearable, so it can share some of its stored-up juice with the device.
You won’t be seeing Simband on any consumer products anytime soon, because at this point the platform is in its prototype stage and is currently under development.
Samsung said it would soon offer APIs for software and also noted that the future Simband device was going to be a modular one (reeks of Google’s Project Ara, doesn’t it?) that will arrive equipped with support for add-on to be used to track all sorts of data.
At this point, the Simband prototype is capable of tracking heart rates and steps like most health-centric bands do today, but it goes a step further by also being capable of monitoring blood flow, skin temperature and hydration levels among other things.
At this point, Simband is powered by an ARM Cortex-A7 dual-core processor and supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in order to connect to other devices.
All in all, Samsung is hoping Simband will grow up to be more than the average wearable, but an open platform that welcomes the convergence of hardware and software specialists.
