Smartphones are currently the communications exchanges for wearables. But thanks to new technologies, more and more wearables are also becoming capable of performing typical smartphone functions – and vice versa.
Few smartphone owners are likely to be aware that the device they carry around in their pocket today has more computing power than a PC had just a few years ago. Smartphones have long been about much more than making calls and sending text messages. Nowadays they send, collect and process wide-ranging types of data and are permanently connected to the Internet and continually communicating with other devices. In compact, portable form, they combine extensive sensor systems, communication capability and computing power, making them by far the most widespread “wearables” in use. According to market research organisation CCS Insight, some 1.48 billion smartphones were sold worldwide in 2015 alone. And they have also established themselves as a control centre for wearables, serving as a “gateway” to send data generated by fitness trackers, smart watches and the like over the Internet and onto the Cloud.
Freedom for wearables
However, that partnership might well be dissolved during 2016. “eSIM” (Embedded SIM) is the magic word that will liberate wearables from smartphones. eSIMs will bring an end to the common practice of being tied to one network provider via the SIM card, as they can be switched wirelessly to a new provider. Whereas wearables in 2015 were still linked to the user’s smartphone in their pocket by Bluetooth, a built-in digital SIM card will increasingly be used to connect to the Internet in 2016. eSIMs are small enough to fit perfectly with a wearable’s design. Samsung’s Gear S2 Smartwatch, for example, provides its wearers with a secure 3G connection to mobile communications networks via an eSIM card. They can make calls directly from their wrist, receive data, e-mails and messages or access apps, without having to be connected to their smartphone.
Smartphones on the way out?
Thad Starner, wearables pioneer, Director of the Contextual Computing Group at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Technical Lead/Manager of the Google Glass project, is convinced that smartphones are on the way out. “They require too much of our attention, and that is why they will not last over the long term,” Starner said in an interview with the journal “Technology Review”. According to Starner, there is simply too much effort involved in doing something like reading a WhatsApp message: taking the phone out of your pocket; opening the app; checking the screen; then closing the app again and putting the phone back in your pocket. He believes people in future will want to get their information as they go, such as displayed on their connected glasses, without having to stop what they are otherwise doing.
Smartphones and wearables complement each other
Brian Pitstick from Moor Insights & Strategy, a global technology analyst and consulting company, takes a very different view. On his blog, he writes: “Wearables will steal cycles from your phone as they are more optimised for certain situations. However, they will not replace everything your phone can do.” He sees the attractions of wearables as being that they are sleek, easy to interact with, more socially acceptable in certain situations, and less cumbersome to carry. But as soon as you try to build in capabilities to replace your smartphone, it severely impacts these benefits. His advice to wearables developers: “Wearable devices should be focused on specific use cases and resist the temptation to throw in every feature possible.”
But the same also applies the other way round: with their large numbers of different sensors, smartphones can also take over functions from wearables. Nike, for example, uses Apple’s M7 motion processor in the new iPhone 5S to run the smartphone as a fitness tracker via its Move app. And Fitbit has announced a similar app which will convert the iPhone 5S into a Fitbit tracker. But according to Pitstick, solutions of that kind always quickly reach their limits and so will never be able to replace specifically developed trackers for serious sports enthusiasts: “While a phone could act as a motion tracker (assuming you are carrying it), it is not as accurate and cannot detect things like heart rate, skin temperature, breathing rates, etc. Wearable devices will be able to provide new and added data that smartphones cannot.”
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