Wearable Technology Concepts: Where to Next?
I used to think the Dick Tracy Era would be way past my time, now everyone I know wears a smartwatch of some kind. What’s next?
There was recent chatter among the tech pigeons online about AI, robotics and voice-control being part of the wearables revolution — and all three of these being a big part of the new Metaverse future being paved in Ether before us. As usual, most of it was met with heavy eye-rolls and grumbles from the usual suspects (I confess, I was half of the grumbling faction) but there were a few notions that really jumped out:
1: The Z-flip3 series from Samsung didn’t totally bomb. (ie. people like the idea of folding their devices away to be more portable/less intrusive but like the option of expanding them if needed.)
2: People have been seen more and more using their phones in landscape mode than portrait mode; probably from watching more video content from various streaming services, but then keeping them that orientation to continue using them with wider screen real estate.
3: If we’ve already got to the point where wearables — once derided as a failed experiment — are now near-ubiquitous, then the next stage is to do away with the entirely separate phone device and just roll it into one thing, right?
I live in New York, so take it with a grain when I say every person I know wears a smartwatch of some kind. Anything from a Fitbit Versa 4 to a full-blown Apple Watch Series 7.
I registered a few concepts with the US Patents and Trademarks Office on the off chance they get picked up as the next phase of people simply not using a smartphone: ie. Hooking Airpods to a watch and having a mode of expanding the watch screen if needed.
The ideas are that of expanding the current screen from underneath the watch-face, using a double-tap of the dial to expand it either onto the wrist or onto the forearm.
That is unless the screen is doubled-over like a Samsung ZFlip3 and flips over to expand the screen to double-size onto either the forearm (more practical) or the top of the hand.
These ideas have been rattling around my brain for about 11 years, but I only just sketched them up at Christmas. Let me know what you think?
