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Let’s face it: we’ve all moaned about our smartphone’s lack of battery. Anyone who has ever gone away on a trip and forgotten their charger knows never to do it again.
For wearables, the equation has turned on its head, and it’s a problem which many companies are trying to solve. Microsoft, in a recent post on its TechNet blog, revealed it was going about it in an innovative way: by...
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To ensure the connectivity of wearable devices, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) appears to be the way to go – with limited computing power, the clue is in the name. Yet a recent post from Context Information Security has fired a warning shot over privacy issues in the BLE protocol.
Titled ‘The emergence of Bluetooth Low Energy’, the post addresses how scanning for devices running off BLE...
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A research article discusses the issues surrounding the current Wi-Fi standard for connectivity on wearable devices and proposes a new standard, called Wi-Bo.
Wi-Bo, short for Wireless Body, would have a frequency of between 10 and 20GHz and a maximum range of two metres. As analyst and report author Andrew Sheehy explains: “It seems that what is needed is a completely new wireless networking standard.
“Wi-Fi is a short-range wireless networking standard that is used to...
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Semiconductor solutions provider Broadcom has introduced a new smartwatch platform that reduces power consumption for Android Wear devices.
Broadcom claims the platform reduces power usage by up to 40% by offering a smaller form factor, shrinking the circuit board size by a similar figure and reconfiguring certain features, such as offloading some tasks from the applications processor to less power-intensive parts of the system. With this, OEMs can also add features, or include a larger...
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The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is a hub for all types of technology, from smartphones to washing machines. Yet, alongside connected cars, there was a clear appetite for wearable technology at this year’s event.
Recent research from Accenture found that over the next 12 months 12% of consumers plan to buy a wearable fitness monitor, with the same number expected to buy a smartwatch in the same time frame. Within five years, 40% and 41% respectively expect to...
Most devices on the market use Bluetooth to communicate, and therefore rely on a six-digit PIN code to authenticate between them. This represents approximately one million possible keys which with today's computing power is simple to crack and allow an attacker access to private data about the user without consent.
The researchers showed how information from the wearable device could be revealed in plain text
Other than just notifications, wearable devices are collecting data such as...
