Is The Future Of Wearables With Or Without Smartphones?

According to a report by Statista, the number of mobile phone users in the world is going to reach 5 billion by the end of 2019. Relatively, there are almost 8 billion people on the planet. This means that almost 63 percent of the total world population owns a mobile phone of sorts. And that number is rising since all companies are hell-bent towards designing a smartphone which meets all the norms of a perfect smartphone – one device that can do it all. 

However, it is possible that the smartphone count may plummet sharply. Not because people will stop using smartphones. Because alternatives to smartphones are taking over the world. Wearables. This upcoming generation of technology could dethrone smartphones, once and for all. Wearables are defined as an electronic gadget that can be worn/clipped on the body. It’s a vast category, but the most common ones are

• Smartwatches
• Fitness Bands And Health Monitors
• Earbuds And Headsets
• Clip-On Cameras

Why Are Wearables Catching Up?

As per a survey, over 51 percent of the youth uses some form of a fitness tracker to monitor daily health and activities. Smartwatch sales are booming day by day, clearly showcasing the fact that people are looking towards making their lives easier and faster-paced to catch up with the rest of the world. Hence, in a world where winning matters to a significantly larger chunk of the population, smartphones are slowing them down while speeding things up at the same time.

What makes a smartphone so special? Is it the CPU of the device? Or is it the fact that you can make calls via your smartphone? You can listen to music whenever you want, view pictures, get directions to a place you’re going to, or simply tell your smartphone voice assistant to book a taxi while you read an e-book.

The Future Of Wearables

In the not-so-distant future, a combination of swanky sunglasses/spectacles and a pair of earbuds will be able to do all of the aforementioned tasks, and so much more. A lot of companies are working on smart earbuds that will contain CPUs as powerful as smartphone processors and more efficient than them too. For instance, Here One earbuds from Doppler Labs have a feature that allows you to filter out what you hear. You’re probably thinking, “Hey, I heard about this feature some time back, didn’t I?” Well, these earbuds allow you to filter out selective sounds from your environment, like the crying of a baby, a person playing the piano or just some old fashioned crowd chatter. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that these earbuds are more powerful than some of the early computers. Sadly, the company stopped producing the earbuds because of the lack of funding.

Just like adaptive filtering, a lot of other technologies are being implemented in wearables which can make a huge difference in the way we live our life. Motion sensing earbuds turn on when a user inserts them in his/her ears. Smartwatches detect almost every activity of the wearer, analyze them with the help of the chipset present on the device and provide analytics regarding the same. Wearable cameras click an image every time a catchphrase is detected or when a special gesture is recorded.

Wearables VS Smartphones

With technology reaching a point where all the components of a device can be placed on a chipset which measures smaller than a fingernail, possibilities are endless. Projects like Google Glass weren’t so successful when they started out, solely because society isn’t ready to accept a piece of tech that you can wear on your face. And that’s exactly the difference between wearables and smartphones. A smartphone can never be a part of you, it is just something that’s an “add-on”. Instead, wearables can be a part of you. They replace conventional accessories that a human is already accustomed to. Smart glasses will soon replace “traditional glasses”, smart earbuds will wipe the floor with basic earphones and smart watches will eventually take their place on your wrist instead of your wrist watches. Brands like Fossil have already launched a wide range of smartwatches in order to keep up with the ongoing trends.

Also Read: Understanding Different Realities; What is AR, VR And MR

Once companies figure out how to enable the inclusion of network adapters, graphic modules, camera modules and basically “every smartphone feature” in wearables, the trend will see a shift of technology, which will veer away from smartphones. Subdermal implants and biometric clothing are just some other technological innovations that are making their way into the arena. We can expect to see something way out of the ordinary, or something so ordinary that it will blow our minds away.