Slashdot Mirror
Apple Reportedly Testing Inductive, Solar and Motion Charging For Its Smartwatch
An anonymous reader writes in with the latest from the rumor mill about a possible Apple smartwatch. "We've heard that when Apple reveals its first smartwatch product, there's going to be a heavy focus on health and fitness, but There might also be a way to charge the wearable without plugging it in, according to a report from the New York Times. Inductive charging came in a wave of smartphones last year, including Google's Nexus 4 and Nokia's Lumia 920 range, although we don't often see it in anything smaller than a phone (or camera) form-factor. Apple, however, is looking into cramming the same technology into its iWatch, or whatever it eventually calls its debut wearable."
These are basically all the possible ways to recharge a wristwatch that currently exist, except for physical mechanical contacts. This shouldn't be surprising because if there's one thing history has taught us, it's that Apple tries out practically every permutation of hardware in the R&D process. There were rumours that the "Apple tablet" would come in three screen sizes; it was later revealed that Apple had been testing three sizes on its campus to decide which one it preferred. There were rumours that they'd launch a version with no mechanical buttons; it was disclosed that Apple had tested that permutation too.
Whenever you read an Apple product rumour, before you even question the legitimacy of the source, ask yourself: is there any reason to suppose this is any more than a speculative prototype on their part?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
just walk over the inductive pads for buses and have your hand burned off at the wrist
...they miss the point and try and make it sing, dance & make morning toast for you and that the motion and solar charging is a frantic attempt to make the battery life acceptable. Inductive charging would be good but anyone in the smart watch arena needs to take a leaf out o Pebbles book and keep it simple.
"Motion charging".... hehehehe.... yeah I bet they test that a lot at Apple.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Apple didn't make a success of the iPhone by being first to market with a smartphone, they did it by getting it right. I'm no Apple fanboy, and I own no Apple products, but current smartwatches are a joke, and if anyone is going to take the concept beyond niche/gimmick level, it wouldn't entirely surprise me if it was Apple.
Oh no... it's the future.
Yeah, they didn't make a success of the Apple TV, so its not like everything they touch magically becomes popular. They had their failures in the past.
Both the iPod and the iPhone arrived pretty late in their respective markets.
They are still testing something like this? Samsung's Galaxy Gear came out already. The capability to quickly bring attractive and reliable products to market is a key factor in modern electronics industry.
Why are they testing this iPod thing? I mean Creative Labs and others have come out with MP3 players already. The ability to quickly bring attractive and reliable products to market is a key factor in modern electronics industry (so there isn't a hope in hell this iPod thing will ever be a commercial success).
The thing is that first to market is not everything. You also have to design the stuff you bring to market well and Apple has a history of appealing to customers by successfully reinventing/redesigning stuff that others have implemented badly and Apple evidently believes they can do it again.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
The elderly are in the sun a lot (gardening, etc), but I don't see the kinetic charging being useful for old people. Do Apple really understand the demographic they're marketing to? Inductive charging could go either way.
It depends: you can turn off the Apple section in your user settings, unfortunately there isn’t a “Wild Speculation” section you can turn off.
Blank until
You are not their target market, that is why it is priced that way.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
and the samsung gear is a complete and utter failure. the Sony smartwatch is a failure as well and that was out before samsung.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Nobody wears watches nowadays.
Instead they wear a small clock attached to a strap wrapped around their wrist.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Pebble users would generally disagree with you. What they do, they do very well.
Pippin. Newton. The list goes on.
Not really first post. Sony has had smartwatches for longer. Heck IBM demonstrated a smartwatch running Linux year back.
1. Near as I can tell, it's approximately 10 seconds of 'active' wear per hour of time-keeping. With a 48 hour reserve, that's approximately 4 minutes a day of 'active wear' to keep the watch 'fully' charged. source
2. Watch winders are often hideously priced, but should only be necessary if you keep self-winding watches like women keep shoes. If you have one, no problem, with 2 you're still fine if you alternate.
That being said, I'd imaging power requirements for something apple would be higher than simply keeping time, so you might need somebody very active.
I don't read AC A human right
I use one. A Casio G-Shock.
As the previous AC said, it was just like the typical "First!" posting on any forum.
Except they are mechanical winding. The Sekio Kinetic which turns that into electrical charging seems to keep my watch working just fine, and I sit at a computer all day as my job.
Of course the issue is that mechanical electrical generation aka Sekio Kinetic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... and solar electrical generation aka the Citizen EcoDrive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... provide tiny amounts of power to keep a watch going, and could not provide anywhere near sufficient power for a smart watch.
microsoft had those timex smart watches that updated by facing the watch to the monitor which then flashed to transfer the data. that was what mid 90's.
Smart watches have existed in some form for a while. the problem has always been the UI is to small to do much with.
personally I think Apple will wait until they can get a decent laser projector to work on your arm. Sort of like that laser keyboard only wrist worthy.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Or if you're me, the worst phone you could ever imagine (battery life, robustness, size, speech quality, too many button presses until i can do what i want to achieve).
I see you've never owned a Motorola RAZR then.
Yeah, they didn't make a success of the Apple TV, so its not like everything they touch magically becomes popular. They had their failures in the past.
Apple TV outsells for example Xbox 360 for the last two years, Wii U, and probably a lot of other devices that you think are very successful.
And of course, 30% of all harvested energy belongs to Apple.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Its more like marketing. BTW the only MP3 player I ever bought was from Creative Labs and at least their bundled headphones weren't a complete POS. I plugged it in and i looked just like any other USB pen and I can drag and drop MP3 files into it easily. Much better than having to use iTunes.
And yet for some reason millions upon millions of people disagreed and bought the iPod, and don't tell me it was just marketing. There is always more to a blockbuster hit it than just marketing.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
There's nothing "elite" about the mechanism. I got a self-winding watch made by Seiko for my 18th birthday in 1973. I don't know what it cost, but we were a decidedly middle-class family. Still works great BTW.
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
My Lorus kinetic watch (bought 15 years ago for the princely sum of £20 so hardly prestigious) has a battery that will last 9 months if kept motionless. The problem is it doesn't have the juice to power a smartwatch. The advantage is it doesn't need to...
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Thanks! I had trouble finding that...seemed I had an empty list to select from...but a 'reset' populated the list and I will see if that does the trick :D
Max.
Wow.. I totally forgot about those. And I HAD one. Timex Datalink. Talk about a walk down memory lane... Thanks! :)
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
My brother has one of those Chinese phone watches that does everything - even has a camera, SIM and MicroSD in it, and it's about the same size as my Breitling Navitimer. Maybe a smidge thicker. He also has a Tag Heuer analogue watch that has motion charging built into it. I'm pretty sure I can combine the two and get a patent on the corners...
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I have a MotoRAZR V3i and a V3r, I'm pretty sure you guys can't be referring to either of those as "worst phone ever" because frankly, they're the best phones ever.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
The XBOX 350 had sold about 80m units worldwide last year, compared to about 13m for the Apple TV. The only reason the Apple TV is now selling more is because the 360 has reached saturation point. The Wii U is widely regarded as a failure and the sales figures reflect that.
Not disputing that the Apple TV has done okay, but your claims are distorting the truth somewhat.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I'd argue that most first generation Apple products are implemented badly too. The iPod took a good couple of years to really gain traction, by which time they had managed to improve the hardware and most critically the software to a usable state. Beyond that the hype machine made sure every new product would sell, but did little to improve the implementation of early versions.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I carry a full-size wall clock in a backpack which I pull out to check the time.
The XBOX 350 had sold about 80m units worldwide last year, compared to about 13m for the Apple TV. The only reason the Apple TV is now selling more is because the 360 has reached saturation point.
Your writing is misleading - Xbox 360 sold maybe 80 million units up to and including last year, not last year. Big difference. And of course Apple TV is just at the beginning. But right now they are selling more than Xbox 360 every quarter, and have done for two years, and still increasing.
Who thinks the Wii U is successful? And the 360 has been out for almost a decade. Apple TV outselling it the last two years means that people may have stopped replacing their 360s as much, not that apple TV sold a lot.
current smartwatches are a joke
I don't know. The pebble is ugly, but I'm pretty partial to the smartwatch2 from sony. It looks nice, it's the thinnest out there and it doesn't have any "deal-breakers". Everything about it is pretty decent, although there's no killer features. It does only what you would expect a simple smartwatch to do.
Your writing is misleading - Xbox 360 sold maybe 80 million units up to and including last year, not last year. Big difference. And of course Apple TV is just at the beginning. But right now they are selling more than Xbox 360 every quarter, and have done for two years, and still increasing.
You are a fantasist; Sales of Apple TV (its 3rd Generation Product) over the last year has sold a (none too shabby) 6 Million units http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.... Its in its 3rd Generation and has been on sale 2007. Its market is now threatened by (media) consoles (and yes the xbox sells better...as does the Playstation note I don't separate the revisions), Intelligent Blu-ray players, Streaming devices like the Roku and Android devices, and the Chromecast, and that is without mentioning the massive growth of smartTV and similar products.
Apple TV could have been Apples next device. It isn't...it wasn't...it will never be. In my mind it is Cooks second biggest failure. His first not spending its cash horde on some serious acquisitions.
Long ago, I got into an argument with a superior. I was insisting that the next big leap in electronics would be wireless charging. He firmly believed, in late 2008, that this would be impossible, dangerous, and never come close to being worth the investment for any company. I believed there would be a way to do it, especially with low-power devices, and likely even unto light bulbs. I feel vindicated today.
The iPhone arrived late? What else was available in 2007 with a touch screen, browser, etc? I mean I don't like them any better than the next guy, but I'm interested to know what prior art you speak of.
I think the 20/40 GB of music vs the 64 mb that conventional MP3 players offered was the key. I hate itunes with a passion but i only have to deal with it to sync music.
I was in the market for a MP3 player at the time. In my neck of the woods the most common variety was the 32mb memory stick type. Other than that there was the NOMAD which was expensive and I had to look for quite a while until I found a shop that sold it, then there was the iPod. I picked the iPod because it was a nice compromise between small size, capacity and a UI that seemed to be designed for efficient one-handed use which was nice since I'm a keen cyclist. I didn't like iTunes either (still don't), but I decided I could live with it and while the 5Gb capacity was smaller than the NOMAD it was plenty more than I had music for at the time. This guy kind of summed it up for me. It's kind of interesting to take a look at the original slashdot thread:
http://slashdot.org/story/01/1...
It is full of recommendations to buy other players with more capacity and features but everybody still went out and bought an iPod. Judging from some of the posts in this current thread a sizeable portion of the Slashdot crowd still hasn't gotten over the shock of people preferring simplicity and portability over features.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
A watch can be easily connected to the blood vessels in the wrist and use the O2 / glucose mix as an energy source like the rest of your body. Recharge by eating. This would be real bleeding-edge technology.
Note that the use of blood as a power source (for implants) is seriously being researched. Look up "biofuel cell".
the Slashdot crowd still hasn't gotten over the shock of people preferring simplicity and portability over features.
Actually most have their music on their phones. I use https://play.google.com/store/... Vanilla Music on Android. In fact people everywhere are ditching their iPods for Android.
I wonder if Apple is aiming to eliminate the need to remove your watch for charging.
I've owned basically waterproof watches since the 1980s and seldom take them off for any reason except for situations where the watch might get in the way.
One limitation to any smart watch seem to me to be how often it needs to be taken off to charge.
It's hard to see any smart watch that does anything useful charging solely by the means listed, but I do wonder if there's some way to maintain or extend the charge so that the watch has to be charged externally a lot less often.
As the previous AC said, it was just like the typical "First!" posting on any forum.
Ironically Apples smartwatch is still vaporware. the Galaxy Gear is out and selling; I suspect a better Galaxy Gear Revision will be out before Apple gets itself organized. Samsung have learned having prototypes in the back room causes them to be kicked around in the courts over a few design/interface patents, because Apple said "First!". I am not sure who will control the smartwatch market or even if there is one, but if there is Samsung are in a strong position to capitalize on it...Apple not so much.
Apple needs to figure out a way to harness shame, anger, frustration and greed to charge their devices.
Talk about an inexhaustible energy source.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Apple has a history of putting new Employees on fake projects to see if They can keep Their mouths shut.
The iPhone arrived late? What else was available in 2007 with a touch screen, browser, etc? I mean I don't like them any better than the next guy, but I'm interested to know what prior art you speak of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... browsers have been available on phones since at least 1994 ironically the first example given fro a mobile browser is the Apple Newton!? It suggests the first mobile phones was in 1996 with " Unwired Planet (later to become Openwave) put their "UP.Browser" on AT&T handsets" So beating Apple by 11 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... capacitive touch screen work began in 1965!? Hell the nintendo DS even have touchscreen back in 2004. In fact a whole host of companies where working on todays capacitive phone around that time...including samsung. In fact famously the iPhone looks eerily similar to a Sony Prototype. Although here is the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... LG Prada which was on the market 6 months before the iPhone.
The original iPhone was a hell of a device, but was built on established technology.
And first generation Microsoft stuff is great? Pretty much everything north of a mouse has problems on Rev A hardware. I like Apple, I have a lot of Apple stuff, but I never buy the first generation of any Apple hardware and never run any software earlier than a .2 level.
Same with pretty much everything out there. I'm tired of being a beta tester.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Its more like marketing. BTW the only MP3 player I ever bought was from Creative Labs and at least their bundled headphones weren't a complete POS. I plugged it in and i looked just like any other USB pen and I can drag and drop MP3 files into it easily. Much better than having to use iTunes.
Two words: smart playlists. I can and do have iTunes populate my iPod based on metadata--play count, last played date, genre, personal rating, whatever. I haven't had to drag and drop anything in over a decade.
Apple TV was launched in 2007, it's getting on for seven years old. 13m is the stated lifetime sales.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I have Several V3is I use as backups. Surely not even a contender for worst phone ever. Work great as a modem too.
I have a Pebble and charging is probably the least convenient part of things (plug in USB adaptor, plug in charger cable, charge watch).
The little magnetic charger clip isn't too bad, but is pretty easily detached if things get bumped.Being able to have a "base station" of some sort that does wireless charging - similar to newer phones can - would be very nice. They could have designer base-stations that look nice as well.
Make it look like, and then all you need to do is drop you watch on the little pad before bedtime. No messing around with cables etc, which reduces clutter.
Of course, millions upon millions of people bought Windows. Sometimes the mob is not smart.
Millions of people can't be wrong. Use Windows. Drink Coke. Eat McDonalds.
I could care less. I don't like it. FWIW I was a late, late adopter of MP3 player technology and I got a ZEN Stone. Why? Well my mobile phoneback then, a Sony Ericsson K750i, could play MP3s just fine. Yes all way back in 2005 *before* the iPhone was released. In fact it even had a better camera than my iPhone 3GS that I got years after. Only recently has Apple decided to bless its users with 'innovations' like the camera flash I had back then. I just got that MP3 player because I wanted something small that I could toss around while I jogged without being afraid of dropping it in the ground. In that regard the iPod would have been useless to me. Unless it was the Mini, or Nano, or whatever model. just not the Classic which is probably the only model they make money with.
Apple needs to trim its iPod line to *two* models. If not *one* model. They are just dumb if they think they can stop losing money on it by offering more case colors.
Yes. So instead of DnD you wait for iPod to sync. Plus you can't use it as an USB pen. Which I did more than once. For me its a misfeature. But I can understand some people may like that. I don't. I like to know what is in the device. I am one of those guys that meticulously arranges his shelves man.
That is because it had a hard disk instead of using flash. Plus transfers were fast because it used Firewire at a time USB 2 was not available. There were other players with hard disks back then man. The iPod was outrageously expensive as a music playing device. AFAIK a lot of people bought it just because they could use it as mobile storage as well. For me it was useless because it was expensive and you couldn't drop it without risking messing up the hard disk heads. Not to mention that Firewire never quite got wide adoption on PCs. The funny thing is Apple themselves eventually switched to USB for I/O and Flash for storage. So guess which approach won in the end?
You are wrong. It was less portable. It was bigger than a lot of MP3 devices and it didn't handle e.g. being dropped on the floor as well because it used a hard disk drive instead of flash for storage like most of the other players were doing by then. It had more capacity. Which is something different. Arguably it had a better UI but Creative Labs and others sued Apple for the UI and Apple had to settle. I think that says enough about how original their UI was. I still remember when the Diamond RIO came out. That was innovation man. The RIAA sued their pants off, just like they sued Sony for making Walkmans decades before. Apple took that and made basically a huge portable hard disk that could store and play music too. It was popular with some Mac heads and prolly made some profit but did not sell well at all. In fact back then it did not even have iTunes. They only added that POS later on after they bought off a 3rd party company which made the precursor software. Eventually it got cheaper. I remember it being popular, but only after the flash memory based models with USB I/O came out. I don't know a single person with a hard disk iPod.
the Slashdot crowd still hasn't gotten over the shock of people preferring simplicity and portability over features.
Actually most have their music on their phones. I use https://play.google.com/store/... Vanilla Music on Android. In fact people everywhere are ditching their iPods for Android.
I'd probably rewrite that to say that people are ditching iPods for smartphones -- unless you have an agenda.
Nothing to do with an Agenda...Although the fact that you did not want to correct iPod to MP3 Player Market screams at your own. The reality is the MP3 Market was the iPod market...in the same way the smartphone market is the Android market.
Please look up what vaporware is.
Vaporware is a term in the computer industry that describes a product, typically computer hardware or software, that is announced to the general public but is never actually released nor officially cancelled.
The Apple smart watch is a rumor and speculation by people outside Apple. Apple might be working on a smart watch and may have been doing so for years, but Apple isn't going to announce it until it is ready for sale.
From your link "Vaporware is also a term sometimes used to describe events that are announced or predicted, never officially cancelled, but never intended to happen." it is the sentence after the one you quote. Never has a Username been so apt.
Of course, millions upon millions of people bought Windows. Sometimes the mob is not smart.
Actually, most of the millions upon millions of people who use Windows did not explicitly buy Windows. Sometimes the mob isn't even given a choice.
Its also worth noting that sometimes you can only push the mob so far. Its interesting that many hardware vendors that had previously gone along with Microsoft and changed their entire home PC lineup to be Windows 8 exclusively are now offering Windows 7 preloaded PCs again. There's only one reason to do that, and that's because those vendors believe forcing people to choose between Windows 8 or nothing is causing many people to choose nothing. I'm taking no small pleasure in lumping Windows 8 supporters with New Coke supporters and predicting the same ultimate destiny for both.
Well I never got an iPod. I got an iPhone for similar reason though. I couldn't buy the HTC Desire back here because it wasn't available in this country. But for me that is a marketing issue not a product quality issue. Next phone I buy will probably be a Samsung Galaxy device or some other Android device. If my money and pants are big enough I will probably get the Galaxy Note.
Scully's gadget is called Shine and Apple should be well aware of it since they sell it at Apple stores.
Back then a colleague of mine wanted to buy a mini disc player (remember?) with a pile of discs for her frequent business travels.She is not a technically minded person. I recommended her to check out the newfangled original ipod. She loved it immediately. Simplicity in use, no piles of discs. Subsequently, I helped her by ripping her 50 or so CDs on my Mac and then putting the music on her iPod (in 128K quality if I remember well, unthinkably low these days) - she did not have a computer with firewire. Anyway, the lady had several years of pleasure out of it.
Bad comparisons with Wii and Xbox, which have much higher price points being designed for high speed game playing.
So do Lifetrak (but with weak external software), Shine (ditto) and Fitbug ( which could use a little better form factor and button response reliability.). Both are possible with generational improvement, yet none are "junk".
Eco drive watches are (most models) run by an electric motor. Surely a digital smart watch would use less power with the right display, yes?
I buy a new watch for about $10, because the watch, band, and battery all have limited reliability after that. I don't see why I need to buy an Apple watch.
Yeah, they didn't make a success of the Apple TV, so its not like everything they touch magically becomes popular. They had their failures in the past.
Depends on the definition of "success" - Apple TV was in the top ten of Amazon "Televisions & Video Products" sales charts for years. Still is.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Apple TV was launched in 2007, it's getting on for seven years old. 13m is the stated lifetime sales.
So you are claiming the Apple TV died over half a year ago.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.