The smart wearable is becoming more and more popular, not only with the general public but with makers looking to open up into a wider section of the market too. We’ve already seen notable efforts from Samsung, Sony, LG, Motorola on the market and soon we are to see arguably the biggest which is the Apple Watch.
At Mobile World Congress this year we saw another group of fitness bands/VR headsets and smartwatches coming from multiple different manufacturers who are all looking to advance the market ever more. We’ve narrowed down the 5 best wearables from this year’s MWC event.
HTC may have announced the HTC One M9 this year and that may have been their most hyped reveal at mobile world congress, but there’s also been quite a lot of hype over their other two releases this year. The first is the HTC Grip which is a fitness band that HTC have paired up with Under Armour to launch and it looks to be aimed at the serious athletes who are looking to track everything from steps to distance walked/run and more, obviously accompanied with an application on your smartphone.
The HTC Re Grip is made of a rubbery plastic that makes it water proof, resistance proof and all the proofs you need when it comes to a rugged fitness band. What sets the HTC Grip apart from other fitness bands is that Grip supports GPS which allows you to capture distance, pace, and calories burned, and syncs to your smartphone when you get back. The reason the HTC Grip will retail for $199 as opposed to the other fitness bands out there retailing between $50-$150 is that it also allows you to receive notifications on your wrist, respond to messages and control music playback. Initial reports suggest a really fast and responsive device with a solid take on fitness as well!
Huawei are a company that you’ll start hearing a lot more of in America as they are one of the biggest smartphone makers in Asia and are looking to bring their incredibly cheap products to the Western market. The Huawei Watch is a great example of this. For a long time, people argued between which Android Wear smartwatch was the best looking, the LG Watch R or the Moto 360. Well both may have been trumped by the beauty of the Huawei Watch.
It offers an all metal body and looks more like an original watch that any other smartwatch on the market right now. It has a rounded screen like the two aforementioned watches and a metal band as well which always adds a touch of class. It is running Google’s Android Wear operating system which is a very solid smartwatch OS capable of mirroring notifications and more very easily. This is definitely a smartwatch to look out for over the next few months.
The Samsung Galaxy VR 2 is Samsung’s second iteration of it’s VR headset. However, how it works is that it plugs into the newly released Samsung Galaxy S6 and that is the screen that you can view. Clever technology then tells the Samsung Galaxy S6 what to show and it becomes it’s very own virtual world.
This is different from other technologies such as Oculus Rift as it doesn’t have its own standalone software and as a result must be used with an S6 in order to work. Samsung claims thanks to the improved specs and screen and smaller size than the original (which was built for the 5.7″ screen of the Note as opposed to the 5.1″ screen of the S6) that this VR is it’s best yet and there’s no reason to doubt that as the S6 is by far it’s best phone yet.
LG released the LG Watch R which received rave reviews for it’s incredible design that rivalled the previously unbeatable Moto 360 when it came to a beautiful looking round watch. However, now LG has released the Urbane edition which looks to be a slightly thinner and more casual version of the original R watch.
The heart rate monitor on the back, combined with the barometer and accelerometer inside, make it a good watch to use when walking out and about in the wild – but then again, there are many other devices that are equally as stylish that are better suited to the task.
The HTC Re Vive is more of a prototype that an official product right now. It is a combination of Valve’s incredible foot in the gaming space and the genius hardware design that HTC have come to be known for. The HTC Re Vive is a virtual headset. It has 70 sensors that capture data around you to send motion, movement speed, special awareness and more. From initial videos and reports, journalists were taken into a pre-set up room and shown a tech demo of a painting sim, a 360 underwater world and a tech demo of some Portal levels.
The initial comments suggest that this device is simply the best VR headset out right now. It offers a 90 frames per second refresh rate and so motion blur and such aren’t there, it offers two 1080p screens that offer a 3D virtual environment and with the incredible support of Valve and other partners such as Google, Lionsgate, HBO and more, this could be a real VR contender alongside the Oculus Rift and the Samsung Gear VR in the future.
So these have been the top 5 wearables to have come out of MWC 2015. Think we’ve missed one or have an opinion on any of the products, be sure to drop a comment below and let us know!
HTC Re Grip
