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Wearable technology could see greatly improved experience through tiny chip

Rebecca | July 28, 2015

A WiFi reflector chip may be all that wearables need to enhance battery life and speed them up.

NASA researchers have now developed a type of WiFi reflector chip that does not require the use of traditional transmitters, and that is now showing a massive amount of potential for improving the experience associated with wearable technology.

These chips reflect the signal instead of relying on the usual type of transmitter, which offers drastic improvements.

Through the use of this chip, it makes data transfer as much as three times as fast as it would be through regular WiFi connections, and it uses notably less power. When you put this into context through its use with wearable technology, what it means is that it will allow for considerably greater battery life, and a notably faster performance. Since these devices are waiting to take off in the near future, this could mean that this type of development could make the difference in boosting their appeal to consumers.

The reason is that this WiFi reflector chip could potentially overcome some of the biggest wearable technology challenges.

Wearable Technology - NASA One of the main reasons that consumers haven’t been as impressed with wearables as they could be is because of the battery life. The average device doesn’t last much longer than a day with standard use, and consumers require more than that from a gadget that many of them expect to wear all day and all night (to take advantage of the sleep tracking, alerts, and other functions that they feel might benefit them if they don’t take the device off).

When the WiFi connection isn’t as demanding on the device’s battery power, it means that it won’t run out of juice as quickly, and it could mean that wearables will start to last longer and it may even become possible to make them smaller, since the battery is typically one of the largest components – if not the largest component – that the device must contain.

The size of smartwatches has also been one of the issues that has been causing the sale of these wearable technology devices to stagnate, particularly among women consumers. Should it become possible to reduce their size without cutting back on their battery lifespan, that may also bring about some considerable appeal among consumrs.

Mobile devices now used by 94.5 percent of Chinese population

Rebecca | July 23, 2015

According to some of the recent statistics from the country, this figure had been reached by the end of June.

A statement that was released by the Ministry of Industry in China has revealed that a massive 94.5 percent of people across the country were equipped with mobile devices – primarily phones – by the close of June, this year.

That is considered to be an official data report within the country and the stats will be those used by the government.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the statement based on the mobile devices data from the first half of this year. It revealed that this year, there were an additional 6.88 million new mobile phone users on top of the previous figure, which brought the total of users across the country to an estimated 1.29 billion. There was a 100 percent ownership penetration recorded for cell phone users 9 different provincial-level regions, which included the provinces of Zhejiang and of Guangdong, as well as in the cities of Beijing and Shanghai.

The mobile devices are seen as contributors to the spread of internet access in China.

Mobile Devices - People Shopping in China Furthermore, the number of Chinese users who opted for broadband mobile internet services (including 3G and 4G) rose to the level of 674 million by the close of the first half of the year. It included 52.1 percent of all smartphone users.

That said, when it came to 4G mobile network, specifically, which is the internet service that is currently the fastest in the country and that is above and beyond other methods previously available in the country, has spiked to reach notably higher levels than in previous data collection. By the end of June, the recorded total had reached 24.69 million more than the figure that was recorded only one month beforehand.

This brought the total number of mobile devices connecting to 4G internet to 225 million. In a country in which home computers that were connected to the internet did not reach the levels that were recorded in many western nations such as those in Europe and the United States, this is clearly showing a rapid expansion of faster internet services to people who may not previously have had regular access to them.