Functional Fashion and the Future of Mobile - Wearable Android

Wearing Android

The future of mobile devices is wearable

Talk by Siamak Ashrafi, researcher at YLabs

Embedded devices are all around us in card readers, registers, etc. This is the wrong way of doing things.

MEMS sensors are so prolific that you will find them in all mobile devices. The sensors include acceleration, temperature, gravity, gyroscope, light, magnetic field, orientation, pressure, proximity, humidity, vector, camera, microphone and touch. Antennas include CDMA, GSM WiFi, NC and Bluetooth. Sensors make a smartphone close to self aware. Code that includes gravity, accelerometer and linear accelerometer allow devices to sense if you have taken a fall and will notify those needed. 

These sensors allow for seeing, hearing and feeling through camera microphone and touch. This sensor data, coupled with Android, utilizes Google Cloud Messaging to pair sensor suites with devices to connect to the Internet and send the data to anything. Near Field Communication tags allow for quick transfer of information including Bluetooth handshakes, Credit Card information and Wi-Fi passwords. These NFC tags only work when in extremely close proximity, aka skin-to-skin. These low energy devices allow for a bevy of Wearable devices.

The uses of device-based objects are shown in the differences between Rovio and Romo:

Rovio
Device required specialized hardware and components and was late-to-market because of problems with the Specialized hardware.

Romo
Device added wheels to an iPhone and was able to do the same as the Rovio for a fraction of the cost and without the problems thanks to the hardware being already vetted and tested by Apple.

Mind versus Body shift

We have been shifting from using our body to survive to using our mind to survive and our bodies have not adapted to the current level of inactivity and has led to numerous problems.

There are two types of Android devices on the market, those that run Android and those that only utilize Android.

Devices that utilize android but do not run it include the Jawbone Up, Lark, FitBit and the Nike+ Fuelband. The Jawbone Up tracks your sleep, activity, food and drink, mood and others but only mentions what it has been doing when you plug it in. Lark does a lot of what the Jawbone up does but includes a small display while the FitBit includes a large enough display to show a clock and other data in future devices. Nike+ FuelBand only works on iOS but includes a display akin to the FitBit.

Watches

Pebble Watch: Runs other OS, Black and White
Sony Watch: Runs some Android, Color
Samsung Watch: Runs full Android, same hardware as top-level devices a year ago.

Phones

Apple M7 Motion Co-Processor

Glasses

Glass UP: Read-only and includes mail, messages, text messages and notifications.
Recon Jet: Android without Google software
Google Glass

Applications allow new technology to succeed by allowing anyone to adapt and utilize something new. Glass is the next device that won't be left at home.  While Glass is currently in the Explorer Edition, it will change to be more attractive and fashionable in the future. The hardware includes all of the pieces except for the cell antenna, keeping the high-power devices away from your head.

Glass originally used Google's Mirror API to connect to AppEngine to develop applications, now you can write through the GDK to directly program apps. While the GDK allows for deeper implementation, the Mirror API lets programmers unfamiliar with Android to develop with all of the tools needed to get information on Glass.

For Glass, one primary feature is the built-in augmented reality. This required a combination of powerful processors and sensors that wasn't accessible by the public until today's Smartphones.