Wearables
Latest Andru Edwards Videos
The New Apple Watch Reportedly Listens All Day, Then Recaps Your Life Back to You
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Wearables, Artificial Intelligence,
A watch that listens to your day and then hands it back to you as a tidy summary is either the most useful thing Apple has put on your wrist in years, or the reason you take the thing off. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports it is coming to the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4, which Apple is expected to show at its Surprise and Shine event at 10AM PT today.
The watch reportedly uses its microphone alongside GPS and its other sensors to pick up what you are doing, then generates a daily recap: what you ate, when you worked out, who you spent time with, and summaries of the conversations you had. Gurman reports the recaps live inside the new Siri app, so you can ask about your own day and get an answer. Apple has confirmed none of this. We find out in a couple of hours how much of it survives contact with an actual keynote.
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Xiaomi’s Smart Band 11 Tracks Sleep HRV for About $43
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Wearables, Misc. Tech,
An Oura Ring 4 costs $349, and then it asks for a monthly membership on top. Xiaomi's Smart Band 11, now official in China, costs 289 yuan. That is about $43, and it also wants to tell you what your heart rate variability did while you were asleep.
Xiaomi is not claiming the Band 11 matches a $349 ring sensor for sensor, and nobody should assume it does until reviewers spend a few weeks with one. But the price is low enough that the usual question about wrist trackers, whether the data is worth what you paid for it, mostly answers itself.
Click to continue reading Xiaomi’s Smart Band 11 Tracks Sleep HRV for About $43
XREAL’s Aura Glasses Showed Up at IFA With Everything But a Price
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Wearables, Displays, Google,
Every couple of years somebody straps a display to your face and tells you the laptop is finished. XREAL's Aura is the 2026 version of that pitch, and it turned up at ShowStoppers during IFA in Berlin this week running Google's Android XR. It still has no price and no ship date more specific than "fall."
What happened in Berlin was a demo. XREAL announced nothing at IFA. The glasses were shown as Project Aura alongside Google at I/O back in May, then got their real name, a full spec sheet, a content lineup and a reservation page at AWE in June. Berlin was one of the first big consumer shows where a general audience could put them on, which is worth something. The news itself is three months old.
Click to continue reading XREAL’s Aura Glasses Showed Up at IFA With Everything But a Price
Meta’s Screenless Ray-Bans Now Do Turn-by-Turn Walking Directions
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Wearables, Artificial Intelligence,
You know the corner. Unfamiliar city, phone in your hand, thumb hovering over a map, and you still walk half a block the wrong way before the blue arrow catches up with you. Meta's smart glasses have been sitting on your face this whole time doing nothing about it. Firmware v128 changes that, and it does it on the pair without a screen.
The update adds turn-by-turn walking directions you launch with your voice. Say "Hey Meta, navigate to Times Square" and the turns come through the open-ear speakers. Until now you couldn't start navigation from the glasses at all. You started a route in a third-party app on your phone and let the audio ride over Bluetooth, or you asked Siri or Google Assistant to do it for you. Both work. Neither keeps the phone in your pocket, which is most of the reason to wear the things.
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Meta Closes the Ray-Ban Glasses Trick for Hiding the Recording Light
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Cameras, Wearables, Editorial,
The white light on the front of a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses is the only thing standing between you and a stranger filming you. That's the whole design. There's no shutter sound, no lens barrel, no obvious gesture. A small LED comes on, and you're supposed to notice it and act accordingly.
Meta has started rolling out an update that closes the newest way people were getting around it. Until now, the glasses only checked the LED at the moment you pressed record. Start a video with the light exposed, then slide a finger or a piece of tape over it, and the camera kept going. Alex Himel, Meta's VP of wearables, announced the fix on Threads: "The camera will now stop working if the light is covered during a recording."
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Legato Just Hid an AI Hearing Aid Inside a Normal Pair of Glasses
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Wearables, Artificial Intelligence,
In a loud restaurant, somebody across the table says something, you catch about 60% of it, and you nod anyway. For a lot of the 50 million American adults with hearing loss, that's every conversation, and the fix is a device you have to admit you need. A startup called Legato is going after that problem by not making a medical device at all.
Legato came out of stealth Wednesday with $12 million in funding and its first product, Legato Frames. It's a pair of glasses with hearing assistance built into the arms. From across the room, they look like glasses.
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Garmin’s Fenix 9 Pro Gets a Titanium Case and a Satellite Lifeline
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Wearables, GPS,
The Fenix 9 starts at $999.99. The Fenix 9 Pro starts at $1,099.99. Both are available now.
Click to continue reading Garmin’s Fenix 9 Pro Gets a Titanium Case and a Satellite Lifeline
The Ceramic Apple Watch Might Be Coming Back
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Wearables, Rumors,
Every year around this time, the Apple rumor mill produces one story that fans want to be true so badly that it spreads faster than its sourcing deserves. This year it is the ceramic Apple Watch.
The claim: Apple will bring back a ceramic case with the Apple Watch Series 12, expected at next month's September event. It would be the first ceramic Watch since the Series 5 Edition in 2019. It is a genuinely appealing idea. It is also, at the moment, one post on X.
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Fitbit Data Can Finally Write to Apple Health, Twelve Years Late
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Wearables, Google,
If you wear a Fitbit and carry an iPhone, you've spent the last twelve years running a small, annoying errand. Your steps and sleep lived in one app. Everything else your phone tracked lived in Apple Health. Getting them into the same place meant paying for a third-party bridge and hoping it didn't break. That errand is finally over.
Google Health version 5.05 landed on iOS this week, and buried in the release notes is the thing people have been asking for since 2014: you can now share your exercise records, sleep, vitals, steps, and more from Google Health into Apple Health. It works for Fitbit trackers and the Pixel Watch, since Google Health replaced the old Fitbit app back in May.
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The Friend AI Necklace That Texted You Now Talks Back, and Costs $150 More
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Wearables, Artificial Intelligence,
Friend is back. The new version, which Schiffmann announced on X as friend 2.0, adds a built-in speaker, so the thing around your neck can now hold up its end of a conversation with what the company describes as a consistent personality. The new price is $249, up from $99 at launch.
Click to continue reading The Friend AI Necklace That Texted You Now Talks Back, and Costs $150 More