An unlike bluetooth headset

asked 2014-09-15 23:31:36 +0300

vattuvarg
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https://wordsmith.social/...

Smart watches seems to be in right now. The idea comes and goes but never seems to get enough staying power. The humble bluetooth headset on the other hand never seems to be in style but still stays in (or on) people's ears.

There are a few questions about wearables here at TJC where headsets are thrown into the debate but where they seem awfully out of place among the flashy wrist computers. So I use this note to propose we do stuff the unlike way. Why purchase a second (expensive wearable) computer when the phone is in the pocket? A trusty gizmo of a simpler type could be enough. ...or even better.

Start with something that looks like a normal bluetooth headset.

When pressing the "multifunction" button of a wireless headset it usually informs me that my telephone is connected and that there's still some hours of power left in the battery. Why can't it tell me what time it is or something else that is useful?

With my old phone (a Nokia 700) it was quite easy to drive according to the advice from the navigation. Don't drum up that usual lament about the Jolla lacking that lovely co-driver voice, please. It'll be here soon enough, I hope. What most people picture in their minds when they think about getting advice from a phone is a driver looking at a dashboard-mounted display. But I had my phone in my pocket (and the display of the sevenhundred was tiny anyway). The directions were fed to my bluetooth headset, so nobody else was bothered by them. ...and they were in Finnish. That wasn't just a polyglot-geeky thing to do. Everything around me, the passengers, the radio, etc. is in Swedish. So when the phone whispered in Finnish it didn't have to compete for attention. Only the navigation addressed me in Finnish. ...and it did so even when my daughter was watching movies on the same machine.

So there we have one idea about a practical wearable device interaction. Pressing the button could tell me the distance or the time for the old "are we there yet" game (or the ETA for an adult companion). On long journeys the navigation app could tell me about problems ahead, like traffic incidents or dangerous weather conditions.

But that is just a start. If the headset could read my body temperature (as mentioned in other threads) then it could send suggestions to the climate control of the vehicle. Simple motion sensors could keep me awake (and alive).

With some simple sensors and some clever apps an unlike headset would be a better wearable than a watch, imho.