Should You Buy a Smartwatch this Holiday Season?

Posted on by Diana Hwang

Wearable technology was all the rage this year, at least in terms of chatter. Many manufacturers produced, or at least announced, smartwatches, and now with the holidays upon us everyone wants to know if they should buy one as a gift or add it to their own wish list.

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Apple Watch

Apple Watch

We agree with many long-time tech industry watchers in recommending consumers waiting because smartwatches aren’t ready for prime time. For now, the devices connect to smartphones and basically replicate their functionality, such as playing music, tracking health data, and providing notifications. On their own, smartwatches are limited. Because of this, pundits say the future lies in how smartwatches can be personalized for wearers’ individual needs.

“Smartwatches are where mobile phones were 30 years ago,” said Andrew Sheehy, chief analyst, of Generator Research Ltd.

He predicts the smartwatch market will grow to 313 million units by 2020, but it’s only a fraction when compared to something like the smartphone market. In fact, Generator Research estimates Apple will ship 25 million units of the Apple Watch in 2015; a paltry amount compared to its iPhone shipments, which KGI Securities expects to hit 71.5 million units in Q4 of this year.

“Fitness smartwatches are ready but what I call horizontal smartwatches are not ready for prime time yet,” said Patrick Moorehead, founder and president of Moor Insights & Strategy. “We are all waiting for Apple and they’ve taken away the biggest objections in the horizontal watches.”

“If you want to have a watch that will be useful as a smartwatch then none of the devices on the market today will be able to deliver,” Sheehy said. “Apple Watch is the only device that’s coming which has the potential to move the market into the smart arena.”

Samsung Gear Live

Samsung Gear Live

Those objections consist of numerous issues, including what Moorehead calls the “Nerd Factor.” Currently, smartwatches are large, clunky devices, but they’re becoming more streamlined. For its first generation, the Apple Watch will come in a range of looks, so users can go with something sporty or more luxurious.

Of course, designers face an array of challenges, including short battery life, poor display quality in bright sunlight, and the obtrusive nature of the gadgets, which can’t be ignored as easily as a phone.

But if you’re determined to be an early wrist adopter and want a smartwatch this holiday season, here are some considerations:

  • Connectivity: Most smartwatches require the device be connected to an Android smartphone or iPhone over Bluetooth for any sort of connectivity. Android Wear smartwatches only pair with Android smartphones running Android 4.0 or later, and the upcoming Apple Watch will mostly likely be iOS exclusive. The Samsung Gear S runs a Tizen-based OS and has 3G connectivity on its own. However, users still need to pair with with a Samsung Android smartphone for full functionality. Also, the Asus ZenWatch and Sony SmartWatch 3 have independent GPS capabilities.
  • Incremental value: Think about whether the smartwatch will make a difference to your daily routine. Most duplicate smartphone functionality.
  • Price: The average smartwatch costs around $300, with higher-end luxury models selling for as high as $650. There are some devices that go for around $200, but there’ll be trade-offs in terms of functionality and hardware quality.
  • Aesthetics: Smartwatches are an early adopter’s dream come true. But for the most part, devices are large and mostly tailored for men. The smaller 38mm Apple Watch may appeal to wider range of customers.
MB Chronowing

MB Chronowing

You can see whether high-profile devices such as the Samsung Gear Live, Samsung Gear S, Pebble Steel, Asus ZenWatch, Sony SmartWatch 3, Motorola Moto 360, or LG G Watch R fit your needs.

HP also entered the market this past summer with an iOS- and Android-compatible smartwatch made by Gilt with a luxurious design by Michael Bastian. Dubbed the MB Chronowing, it retails for $349 for a watch with rubber, leather, or nylon straps. For $649, you can buy the gadget comes with a crocodile strap and sapphire-like glass material.

HP’s smartwatch offers a traditional men’s watch design – it looks like, well, a watch. It comes with an understated black & white LCD, basic notifications, and a clock dial. Fitness tracking is notably absent here, however. The low-tech approach is very different from what Apple and Google’s hardware partners are doing, which seems to be packing in as many features as possible. Consider HP’s a watch that does a bit more.

What About Fitness Trackers?
Microsoft Band

Microsoft Band

If you can’t wait, check out some of the better fitness wearable technology bands instead.

Fitbit has long represented the best value for the money. The basic Fitbit Flex retails for $100 and offers a comfortable fit. There are several models, with features that include counting steps, tracking exercise, and counting calories, as well as silent alarms. The Fitbit Charge shows the time and has a caller ID, in addition to the Flex’s capabilities, and it costs $130. The Fitbit Charge HR and Fitbit Surge will launch in 2015 for $150 and $250, respectively, with added features, including a heart-rate monitor and GPS.

Microsoft is the latest noisemaker in the competitive wearable fitness market. It’s $200 Microsoft Band debuted in October, and it provides similar capabilities to other competitive products, including a built-in GPS, heart rate monitor, calorie counter, and sleep tracker. Like the Fitbit wearables, the Microsoft band supports iOS, Android, and Windows platforms.

Jawbone’s Up24 is perhaps the biggest threat to Fitbit’s fitness tracking crown. While touted for its design, the Jawbone Up24 offers the basic features of an activity tracker for $130. The more advanced UP3 adds in a heart rate sensor and allows you to take the bracelet under water up to 10 meters. It costs $180.

The Nike+ FuelBand SE hits the same price points as the competition, ranging from $99 to $149 depending on the color and build, and it tracks workout intensity, steps, and sleep. The FuelBand smartphone app supports iOS and Android platforms.

The post Should You Buy a Smartwatch this Holiday Season? appeared first on Brighthand.com.

Google Inbox Hands-on: Swiping Your Way to Inbox Zero

Posted on by Diana Hwang

There’s an abundance of email apps designed to help you reach the fabled “Inbox Zero,” but it’s not always easy when you have to lose hundreds of unread messages. Between Mailbox, EvoMail, Mail Ninja, and their ilk, you have plenty of options, but few of them work as well as they should.

Even Google’s struggled with this. One of the common complaints about Google’s own Gmail app is simply how plain it is. It’s traditional at best, a bit boring at worst. However, the web giant has taken major strides to address that with Inbox, its newest email app. Regardless of how much you use Gmail, it’s worth testing the new app’s latest beta version.

Google Inbox

Google Inbox

We’ve been using the iOS version of Inbox over the past week, and our initial impressions are positive. It‘s simple to set up three Google accounts at a touch of a button. The main menu lets you easily log in and out of multiple accounts simply by touching the log-in picture.

Inbox’s user interface is clean, colorful, and playfully reminiscent of the Google+ app. It includes numerous tidy features that help users keep their emails organized and grouped without making it seem like a chore.

The app automatically bundles similar emails. Google previously did this in Gmail by grouping these into separate tabs like “Social” for social media alerts or “Forums” for updates from message boards and mailing lists. With Inbox, those groupings are still there, but they’re each presented as if they were a single email by default, not as separate tabs. Only by tapping on them will you be subject to the whole list.

For instance, if you subscribe to a number of shopping and deal sites like Groupon, LivingSocial, and TravelZoo, any emails you get from those are sorted into Promos, and the app tells you how many new messages you have waiting. You also can create your own personal groups based on your most relevant senders.

While your ultimate goal may be to attain Inbox Zero, Inbox gives users the choice on where and when they want to deal with an email. A left swipe brings up a “Snooze until” window with choices to deal with an email later in the day, the next day, the next week, or even just “Someday.” The email also can be dealt with at a location such as home, in the office, or elsewhere, based on the device’s location.

A right swipe places the message into the Done category, taking it away from the screen. What’s missing, however, is an equally simple way to delete a message. Right now, it’s a relatively cumbersome three-step process. First the user needs to read the email, then select the menu option, and then hit the trash button. Google needs to have an icon or a simple swipe capability — a la Mailbox, which also deploys these kind of shortcuts — to delete messages that just don’t need to be read.

You can also flag a particular email by pinning it. An on/off pin button at the top of the app allows you to do just that and see a list of messages you’ve flagged.

Creating an email is easy. At the bottom right hand corner of the screen is a big hamburger icon with a plus sign on it. Tap on it and a list of recent and popular recipients appears.

Furthermore, Inbox also integrates aspects of your to-do list in as reminders. You can select the reminders feature from the main menu to see their list for the day or create a new one.

After using the app for a few days, we can see how anyone might actually think that going through their emails to achieve Inbox Zero could actually be fun. And one other side benefit: Google could tell we used the app for several days. It asked whether we wanted to convert its standard web-based Gmail client into the new Inbox once. Our answer was a resounding yes.

The post Google Inbox Hands-on: Swiping Your Way to Inbox Zero appeared first on Brighthand.com.

Best iPhone Apps: Sunrise Calendar

Posted on by Diana Hwang

Apple iPhone users who like to plan their schedules ahead of time can tell you that trying to find the perfect calendar app in App Store is an overwhelming task. There are a plethora of personal information management apps to consider, but Sunrise Calendar is one of the few that truly stand out. Every morning it’s easy to check Sunrise and feel more organized amidst a busy day.

Sunrise Calendar app iPhoneWhat makes Sunrise different from others is its tight integration with other third-party apps, including TripIt, Evernote, Google Calendar, Exchange, iCloud and others. Just last week, it was updated to version 2.5 and integrated support for Todoist. Alongside that, Sunrise now supports pushing events from Google Calendar and an event search function.

Setting up the app takes no longer than 10 minutes. After setting up a Sunrise account, you can link your existing Google, Exchange or iCloud calendar accounts to the app in the settings menu. From there, you can decide which calendars will be visible and what notifications you’ll receive. Various other preferences are customizable here too — you choose your default calendar, select how you want the weather to be displayed, decide when to start a week, determine which navigation app will be your primary one, and elect whether Gmail or Apple Mail should be your primary email app.

After the calendar events are imported into Sunrise, you choose how they want to show your day — either as a single “today” view or a three-day outlook. An icon allows you to toggle between the two.

In the today screen, there is a two-week view at the top. Sunrise first lists the all day’s events, then breaks down appointments and places them in “morning,” “afternoon” and “evening” buckets. It retains the color codes already set up from any third-party calendars you’ve linked.

Adding an event to Sunrise is as simple as touching the “+” icon at the top of the screen. You enter your info into a pop-up screen from there, and depending upon what you’re doing, Sunrise shows some cutesy graphics associated with the event. For example, if you’re scheduling a lunch appointment, an icon with a fork and knife appears. If you’re planning a doctor appointment, a medical bag appears.

Sunrise also sees who’s going to a meeting. Tap on a picture or blank icon head and you can connect to that person via e-mail, text or phone. This makes the calendar more social and friendly.

The app also adds a nice touch when entering locations. If you enter an address that’s near something like a restaurant, some nearby selections will appear. You can then share that location via email or text. And because Sunrise can be integrated with Apple Maps, Google Maps and Waze, you can quickly get directions without having to close Sunrise and open a navigation app separately.

Sunrise Calendar app iPhoneThe three-day view is useful for getting a preview of what you have ahead; you can touch the icon at the top of the screen, or hold the calendar and swipe left to the access it. Sunrise highlights the current day with a pale blue background, with a red line making off the current time, allowing you to quickly see the time and day at any particular moment.

However, what Sunrise lacks is the ability to see the three-day calendar in landscape mode. In some cases where there are multiple appointments, the event looks squished, and titles just wrap to the next line based on how much space is available on your iPhone. By comparison, the iPad version shows a full day view. With the larger screens of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus arriving next week, it might be worth it for Sunrise’s developer to look into showing more days in the calendar and in landscape mode.

One of the best aspects of Sunrise is how frequently it receives updates. As mentioned above, one of its newest features allows events to be pushed from Google Calendars – an upgrade, considering that those users previously had to wait for calendars to sync. Furthermore, a faster search function helps you find events more easily. In the today view, you can now pull down the calendar to show a search bar. Type in a word and a list of relevant events appears.

The new integration with Todoist is also a nice touch. If you set a task and a time to remind you of when something is due, the task appears directly in the calendar. If you want to finish your task by a certain time, it’ll appear in the calendar with a check box icon signifying it is a to-do list item. It’ll also show how many minutes remain before the task needs to be completed.

But the best part about Sunrise? It’s free. For the amount of functionality it brings, it’s a great value for any iOS users who want to keep their day organized. Sunrise is available now in the Apple App Store, and recently arrived in the Google Play Store and Mac App Store too.

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