Tag: wearable technology

Recent studies and reports are adding to a growing body of evidence that indicates that people aren’t wild about wearables, yet.

Wearable tech may be one of the fastest growing mobile device categories, but at the moment, the popularity appears to be notably greater among the companies actually developing these gadgets than among consumers who are buying them.

Not only are people not necessarily buying wearables as fast as they’re being produced, but they’re judging those who do.

Some wearable tech has a better reputation than other forms. For example, fitness trackers seem to have been broadly accepted by consumers, as a whole, but at the same time, there are other forms that are bringing about far less love. For example, while spotting a smartwatch on someone’s wrist may generate a great deal of interest and conversation, at the moment, Google Glass and other augmented reality headsets seem to label a wearer as someone much less likeable.

The opinion that consumers have about wearable tech doesn’t seem to have anything to do with its usefulness.

To go back to the Google Glass example, an owner of these wearable devices can take advantage of a very high quality gadget that can be operated by voice command and that brings many of the features that can be found on a smartphone into a hands-free environment. However, despite the fact that it is very handy, people who use the device have been labeled “Glassholes” and are essentially thought of as people who are trying to declare their own self-worth by throwing their money into the latest technology.

A digital research firm called L2 recently released a report that pointed out that while 75 percent of consumers are aware of what wearable tech actually is, only 9 percent have any desire to actually purchase and own one. Even smaller is the 2 percent group that actually owns one of these mobile devices. The report showed that among those who were surveyed, 52 percent felt that the best location for wearables to be worn is on the wrist. Twenty four percent said that some place on the arm was best, and only 5 percent felt that headbands or other head-mounted displays were ideal – even in the form of eyeglasses or contact lenses. Clearly, the design of these products has a long way to go before consumers accept them – and their wearers – more broadly.

The wearable technology device has just been updated to include volume controls, among other things.

Pebble recently rolled out a range of new updates that have added some rather small but quite meaningful improvements to its popular smartwatch, including a few that have been expected for some time now.

Among these updates, one of the most significant is the addition of volume controls to this wearable tech.

Aside from that, the smartphone now also has the ability to recognize apps from the launcher of the device. Owners have been waiting for a long time for the Pebble to offer them the opportunity to control the music volume from their wristwatches, which have been able to control the playback since the wearable tech device first hit the market shelves.

The company announced in a blog post that it was bringing this new control to its smartwatch.

The blog post read that “It’s been a long time since we first demoed volume control in the Pebble Music app back in the day, so we’re really glad to be bringing this feature onboard.” The wearable tech update also gave the ability for apps to be recognized in its launcher, and for those applications to be manually sorted.

In previous versions, the order in which the applications appeared had been static and was not customizable by the wearer. That has been changed in this latest update so that users are able to place items within the launcher into the order that they desire by holding down the select button until the app appears to tremble. It can then be moved to its new position on the list.

These two small but meaningful additions were added as a part of an update to the firmware, itself. This means that the smartwatch users will be required to update their current mobile device app by selecting the support menu and the “check for updates” option. The users of the Pebble through iOS will need to update their iOS application before they will be able to obtain their new firmware. That app was also updated just recently to be able to support the new firmware as well as to add support for iBeacon.