Headworx

The iWatch 2.0 was a sure thing on my list of predictions for 2012. But it has not happened. Do you know why? I know, at least one part of the story. As I explained a week ago and two weeks ago , there is one technology that is absolutely central to the emergence of smart watches. It is the Bluetooth Low Energy, or BLE. BLE is probably the wireless technology with the most potential in the consumer electronics space. It will be huge and everywhere. In future. Because it is not ready for the mass market yet. And you will hear a lot about BLE in 2013. But it will not be until the Q4 of 2013 until we will ride the BLE wave. The reason is, it is not supported by the Android OS yet. BLE links peripherals (various sensors and gadgets) to a central device (a mobile phone or a computer in most cases). On the peripheral side it is just the BLE (a single mode Bluetooth Low Energy radio) chip. On the central side it is usually the Bluetooth 4.0 (a dual mode Classic / LE radio) chip, so th...

The Sony Smart Watch fits into the recently started Bluetooth theme. As a matter of fact I predicted the year 2012 would be the year of the Smart Watch . And as I still stand by my thesis that smart watches will rule the world, my prediction has failed. The timing was all wrong. Apple has not released a smart watch. Google has not released an integrated Android smart watch API. The Kickstarter Pebble Watch project I backed personally is delayed again. No smart watch for me this Christmas. Or may be? Here comes Sony to wipe the tears. Actually the Sony watch is a surprise. Or a couple of surprises. The first surprise is it works out of the box with ANY Android phone. Yes you read this right. It is not tied to Sony platform. It works with my Samsung Note and there is no reason why it would not work with just about any other Android device. All it requires is the Sony application installed. The second surprise is it uses the Bluetooth classic, not the Low Energy. Why - I will pos...

The recent weeks I have been investigating the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology. Honestly I can say there has probably been no other wireless technology designed so well and complete as BLE is. On the other hand BLE is the most confusing and most miscommunicated standard I can remember. The reason for this post is to clear the fog a little. So first, what is the purpose of BLE and why we need yet another standard for wireless communications? Bluetooth has always been about interconnectivity in PAN or Personal Area Network. Interconnectivity means various devices from different vendors can connect and talk to each other. Most typical use case is the wireless headset connecting to a phone. Or wireless mouse connecting to a computer (sans dongle). PAN means the target scenarios are about devices in the close proximity. Like all the gadgets you wear or carry. Your personal cloud, usually with a radius of  one meter (can go up to around ten meters). Bluetooth (the classic Bluet...

Speaking of phones, the Samsung Galaxy Note was a game changer for me. I have stopped using any tablets since I bought the Note I a year ago. As a matter of fact the game changer was the Note's display - 5 inch high resolution amoled, the biggest that fits in a jeans pocket and the densest an eye can handle. Today I am using the Note II and I do not think of any other phone form factor. The Note simply defines a smartphone today. The decision to stop using tablets after adopting the Note was not deliberate. But just after a couple of weeks with the Note I realized my original iPad 1 was discharged and collected a lot of dust. Meaning nobody touched it for a while. Later I truly admired the iPad 3 when it came out. The retina display is fantastic. But I found the 3 too heavy and too difficult to hold one handed to become the house "sofa" computer (or media / reader). Also, for a sofa tablet, support for multiple user accounts is vital (each family member wants their so...

Energy consumption is now probably the most important problem whenever technology is being considered. We scream at oil prices. We cry at our dead batteries. And we love to be unplugged. Last week I had an interesting discussion on the future of Intel and ARM and my last statement was "would you trade half of the performance of your latest smartphone for doubling the battery life?". Ask the question yourself. Would you? I would. Many would. All of us would. We have arrived at the point where the average performance of an average electronics gadget (a smartphone, a tablet, a computer) is more than an average consumer needs. Again - is your laptop too slow? Or does the battery last too short? But leaving the CPU (Intel vs ARM) wars aside, let me focus on the new important trend that starts emerging. The energy harvesting. We, at wiho.me , are doing a lot of ultra low power wireless communications. Wireless communications is an enormous freedom. No need to explain that....