I’m enamored with my FitBit, but one thing that makes this wearable tech slightly less wearable is the fact that I have to charge it.
Yet we have self-winding and solar-powered watches. If the movement of my arm is enough to cause an accelerometer to detect a change, should it also be enough energy to harness to power this device? And if I’m walking around enough outside, in the daylight, shouldn’t there also be enough light for a few photovoltaic cells to keep this device powered?
And theoretically, if you could harness the mechanical energy of my arm, and a little solar energy, you could even have a smaller device as there wouldn’t need to be a large battery.
Self-powered wearable tech, that’s the big win in this space, imho. The UI of the site, the form-factor, the sensitivity of the device will all progress with time.
The other big, big, big opportunity is the correlation with multiple health inputs and recommendation engine about what works and what doesn’t work. I’ll talk about that another time…
David –
I had thought the same about wearable tech, we are honestly not there. People want technology more than they want convenience. They want “features, features, and more features”, thus causing heavier battery usage. If we could keep features minimal and only have the use of a BLE chip, then power consumption very much lessened. As soon as we add a WiFi chip, power consumption goes through the roof. A touch screen (feature), interactive (feature), brightness (feature). Tech has been limited for many years because battery innovation hasn’t been a focus. Luckily you have Mr. Musk that is talking very neat things about battery innovation. Battery just is not a sexy topic to the majority, but it’s a necessity and if done correctly has big money involved.
My thoughts has been around more about “digital wallets” with the use of smart phones. Yet when the phone dies, so does your wallet. It’s a no brainer that they have a serious battery problem. Once again the buying consumer is saying they must have “features, features, features” and so the makers don’t risk making a device that has more purpose and less feature.