Friday 5 June 2015

Sony reveals SmartBand 2 wearable with heart rate monitor

Companies often unveil new a product by putting an executive on stage and making them say nice things about it. Other times, they'll launch a fancy webpage and put up glamorous photos of whatever they're launching. Sony, on the other hand, appears to be unveiling a new product today by accidentally publishing information about it in the Play Store. Which, I suppose, still gets the job done.



The slip-up makes it appear that Sony is making a new version of the SmartBand, its wearable that's meant to help people track what's going on in their life. This new one, called the SmartBand 2, adds a heart rate monitor, which should make it function much better as a fitness tracker. It also has a brand new app, which is what appears to have gone live in the Play Store early and revealed this information. The new app looks a lot better than Sony's dedicated Lifelog app, but you'll apparently still need to download both to get the full experience.

Like the existing model, the SmartBand 2 is also able to track steps and sleep, alert wearers of incoming messages on their phone, and vibrate when they have an alarm. It also has a dedicated button you can press to take a snapshot of all the data it has at the given moment, which is supposed to help you record meaningful moments in your life. That seems like a bit of a stretch, but it certainly sets the band apart from the many similar offerings already out there. It's not stated when the SmartBand 2 will be released, but given that its app is out there, it seems like it should be pretty soon.

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