The technologist in me gets excited about wearable tech. I drool over Google Glass and have bought in to the Nike FuelBand, FitBit and wearable sleep monitors. I even have one of those Burton Jackets with iPod controls on them (I use an iPod classic + skull candy helmet when riding). Wearable tech is going to be so awesome.
Sadly, it’s not awesome right now. Frankly, it kind of sucks. Obviously, my employer makes a fitness product. I like it a lot but it’s for fitness. I’m not talking about GPS watches, I’m talking about SmartWatches, SmartGlasses, SmartShoes and …ugh smart everything? Actually, it’s funny how these companies are setting themselves up for Apple to say “Those Smart Wearable Products? Well, they’re not very smart and they’re not very wearable” (insert photo of clunky huge watches with 4 different features). Obviously I don’t know anything about the future of products from my own employer or Apple so this is just an opinion article about what’s out today.
Let’s talk about the problems with smart products:
Size: Most of the products out there are HUGE. Google Glass looks like you’re targeting nuclear missiles from your forehead. The Samsung Smart Watches are thick and bulky and not stylish. They’re products that overweight nerds would wear. I love monitoring my movements and heart rate. I log a lot of data on myself but to get a full picture of my day with these wrist band things, I’d need to buy the one from Nike, Jawbone and Fitbit and probably one from Samsung just for good measure and that could be doable if they were so huge. Give me a patch I can put on my stomach that reads things. It’s not stylish to wear 3 computers on your wrist that are only half the size of today’s phones.
Functionality:
Every single wearable tech requires a smartphone. The $300 Samsung Watch is worthless without a Bluetooth connection to an Android phone. The same goes for Google Glass. I want a big hunky watch to at the very least make a phone call without needing my phone. Until it can do that, it’s worthless to me. I want to leave the house without my iPhone and rely on Siri all day built into my watch to make calls, stream from iTunes Radio and send a tweet. The tethering thing has to go because while everyone in your tech circle has an iPhone, not everyone does. There’s an argument that wearable tech is for people who have smartphones. No, that’s why I have a smartphone. It’s when I don’t have my smartphone that I want something else connecting me. Can I leave my phone in the car at least and still see SMS messages coming in?
Not quite wearable tech but the Automatic that plugs into my car and sends data to my iPhone. Well, there are other competitors to it out there and they all offer different functionalities but I only have one OBD port in my VW. So I had to pick one and honestly, I am not happy with the features it offer. Oh well, that was $60 (see cost)
Battery Life:
We’re not even at all week battery life with the iPhone yet. We need to improve that first. My Blackberry would get a week battery life and so would my flip phone. That was 12 years ago. Phones do more now but that was 12 years ago. You mean to tell me that batteries haven’t improved? I don’t want to get off a plane and find a plus for my iPhone, iPad, Smart Watch, Google Glass, FitBit and MacBook. No…I’m done with charging devices. Make the battery life last a week on these wearable devices or just give up.
Cost:
$300 for a Samsung Galaxy and $300 for a Samsung watch. No thanks. Again, if the watch was standalone as a phone by itself using Google’s voice tools to work, I’d understand $300 but a device at that cost that requires I also have a smartphone is too much. It’s $150 just for a heart rate monitor that uses Bluetooth which is also too expensive. The Automatic was $60 or $70 and it’s just a piece of plastic with Bluetooth. The king of all jokes is Google Glass at $1500 USD for a pair of glasses that doesn’t even come with a prescription and the main features are Google, taking photos or seeing what my friends are doing on Google+ (the social network no one uses). I have a camera in my backpack that’s amazing, I don’t search with Google and I sure as heck am not using Google+ so this device isn’t for me but at $1500, who is it for? Especially when it works with iPhone but barely but you need an Android $200 at least with a $70 a month phone plan to use the Google Glass. If you’re outside of the cell network (which i me about 50% of the time), the wearable tech doesn’t even work as the voice control requires an internet connection. Which brings me to my final point.
No Device is Standalone anymore:
What’s the deal? Why doesn’t the Automatic for my car give me a CSV file of my car’s actions so I can do my own plotting? Why does it have to go to their servers that I have no control over? I can’t export the data I’m sending them. What are they doing with it? I’m paying for them to host data about my car and tell me very little information. I want that data. When they record where my car is parked so I can find it using the app, I want to see a historical read out of where my car was parked for MY data uses. I want Nike’s FuelBand to give me a text file with my movements and activities. I don’t want to use Nike’s site or google’s site. I want to have my own data and use it any way I wan and delete it when I see fit.
Every bit of hardware released in 2013 required you create an account on a service that silos your device and your data with them. If you switch to a new device, it’s a whole new database and you lose all of that data. Why? Business reasons make sense but it’s also good business to raise the price of oil and people get really upset about that. Why is there no outcry over data silos that own the data we create? We should be really upset about this. If a device I paid full price for stores data on me, I want to see that for myself. When Google Chrome collects data on me anonymously, show me that data before it’s sent to Google.
This is my biggest problem with wearable tech. I’m paying $1500 for a pair of glasses that requires an Internet connection, a smart phone and has limited features that only work with Google services and, at the end of the day, my voice, searches, photos, videos and queries are taken and stored at Google forever.
I’m not cool with that and while wearable tech is exciting, I won’t be investing in anything for a very long time. Then again, I’m also on the verge of getting rid of my iPhone for a flip phone so I guess I’m in the very big minority here.
