Tag: mobile gadgets

The handset maker isn’t about to be left behind in this massive wearable technology trend.

Motorola is now planning to leap right back into the wearable tech market, as it plans to launch its own smartwatches later on in 2014, according to an announcement that was made by Rick Osterloh, the company’s senior vice president.

This particular device is being designed to meet the needs that consumers have already expressed that they have.

According to Osterloh, the smartwatches that Motorola will be launching will have taken into account “consumer issues like style and battery life.” So far, those are both areas where companies have been struggling to keep up with the expectations that consumers have regarding these devices and their willingness to pay rather high price tags in order to obtain them. The announcement was made in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress, during a panel discussion.

These new smartwatches will not be the first time that Motorola has attempted to sell wearable technology.

That said, it is certain that Motorola is hoping that its future attempts with wearables will be far more successful than its previous ones. The MotoACTV was one of the last mobile devices that Motorola had launched that could be worn by the owner. It was an activity tracker that simply never caught on because of its weak battery life and its lack of visual appeal and style. Though the company had previously stepped back from this area, it is clear that it did not fail to closely examine the experience and to attempt to learn from its mistakes.

That said, it won’t be until the actual launch of the devices that the company will actually be able to prove whether or not it has managed to overcome the obstacles that held it back in the first place. Osterloh did not offer any additional details regarding the products themselves, nor anything that the consumer can expect from the release, such as price or the actual date that they will hit the shelves. However, he did point out that the company feels that this will be a very important area for its future.

This does not come as a surprise as wearable technology such as smartwatches is one of the hottest tech segments at the moment. In the middle of the spotlight, right now, are the Galaxy Gear devices from Samsung, as well as Pebble. That said, Apple is expected to come out with an iWatch at some point in the near future – if rumors are to be believed – and it shouldn’t be long before Google releases its own wearable that will have been manufactured by LG.

Google Glass helped to enhance the way that a surgeon can perform various procedures.

Two surgeons from the Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital have started using wearable technology in the form of Google’s augmented reality glasses to be able to boost their ability to make appropriate surgical decisions.

These doctors use the wearable tech’s voice control to access the information that they require, when they need it.

The two physicians, Dr. Szotek and Dr. Browne, became the first in the hospital to start using the augmented reality glasses during abdominal surgeries. They now each wear Glass during this procedure, which typically lasts around four hours. With them, they can access medical information – including records specific to the patient – as they remove tumors.

The augmented reality glasses can provide X-ray and MRI data on its floating display.

This information can all be shown by the wearable technology without getting in the way of the surgeon’s line of sight for the actual surgery itself. As it is commanded by the surgeon’s voice, there is no need to take hands away from where they are most needed and without upsetting the operating room’s sterile environment.

That said, this is only believed to be the start of the uses for Google Glass for these surgeons. They believe that these mobile devices will be more broadly helpful in the medical field as a whole. While other surgeons have used the gadgets’ point of view video streaming in order to educate themselves and have provided students with a live insight into every different phase of a surgery, Dr. Szotek sees this tech going further. He hopes to be able to use biological tracers so that his AR glasses will be able to actually differentiate between healthy tissue and the tumor, itself.

He stated that being able to automatically differentiate between these two tissues “could revolutionize the field of cancer surgery”. This would help to make certain that the tissue could be more completely removed while leaving the maximum amount of healthy tissue behind.

It could also be beneficial for emergency first responders to wear augmented reality glasses so that they would be better capable of handling unusual types of accident or medical condition, and to be able to provide them with accurate remote instructions.