IT LOOKS like a wrist-sized iPhone with an old-fashioned winder. But Apple reckons its first smart watch, announced on 10 September, could be a huge leap forward when it comes to what gadgets can tell us about ourselves, our health and our fitness.
Smartphone apps can already track activities ranging from your morning jog to your sleeping habits. With smart watches and wrist-worn devices like FitBit and Jawbone Up doing much the same, do we need another such device?
Apple claims that its watch can do something few others can: reliably monitor your pulse. That, coupled with movement tracking, has generated excitement about what app developers could do with the technology to monitor health, fitness and perhaps even emotions.
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The Apple Watch has two LEDs in its base 鈥� one in the visible-light spectrum and the other in infrared. They shine into blood vessels in the wrist and the light reflected back to sensors on the watch is used to calculate your pulse. The watch can also connect via Bluetooth to a barometer in the iPhone 6, which measures air pressure as altitude changes, so it can track you as you stand up or climb stairs, say. Other smartphones and devices do much the same using accelerometers. 鈥淭he barometer gives you a stair count and, together with the heart rate monitor, apps will be able to derive the approximate fitness level of the user,鈥� says Kai Kunze, who works on wearable technology at Osaka Prefecture University in Japan. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know any other fitness tracker that can do that.鈥�
It might also be possible to use smart watches to judge emotional states. Rosalind Picard of the MIT Media Lab and her team are using Samsung鈥檚 Galaxy Gear smart watch 鈥� one of the few other models that monitor heart rate 鈥� to see how much data can be gleaned in this way. She has also built a wrist-worn sensor package designed to monitor pulse, motion and a wearer鈥檚 level of nervousness or excitement via skin conductance. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot we can learn from wristband-sensors about changes in the body related to emotion,鈥� Picard says.
What the Apple Watch might lack in ground-breaking sensors, it could make up for in design. The company has sought to solve a key problem of touchscreen-enabled watches: when your finger touches the screen, you can鈥檛 see what鈥檚 happening.
Apple鈥檚 answer is a button called the 鈥渄igital crown鈥� on the right side of the watch, which you can use to scroll and select apps. The watch鈥檚 touchscreen is also pressure-sensitive, allowing different interactions depending on how hard you press it.
The biggest opportunity with wearable technology is reducing the time between someone鈥檚 intent to do something and their ability to act on it, says Thad Starner of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, who led the development of the Google Glass headset. 鈥淲hen that time is small 鈥� a few seconds at most 鈥� you use the device more as an extension of yourself, instead of as a separate device.鈥�
Apple鈥檚 strength is in creating such connections between users and their mobile devices. If the firm succeeds again when the Apple Watch launches next year, we all may soon have sensors tracking our every move.
鈥淚f the Apple Watch succeeds, we all may soon have sensors tracking our every move鈥�
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淥n the pulse鈥�
