Sony SmartBand Review
The number of wearable gadgets is growing every day and two, perhaps, the most noticeable groups are “smart watches” and sports bracelets-trackers. If the former are used to interact with the smartphone and receive notifications, then the latter track your physical activity. Sony decided not to limit itself to SmartWatch watches, but also released an electronic bracelet, the functions of which, however, are not limited to counting steps and affect a variety of aspects of human life. We offer you a review of this unusual gadget.
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SmartBand is an elastic rubber bracelet with adjustable width and a very stylish metal buckle with the Sony logo. On the inside of the bracelet there is a recess into which a white plastic Core module is inserted with a micro USB connector, a mode switching button and three LEDs that indicate the charge level and mode of operation. By the way, you need to charge your SmartBand once a week.
The material is very pleasant, does not irritate the skin and does not cause the hand to sweat, like plastic straps for watches. The bracelet is perfectly adjustable in width and fits perfectly on the arm. The device is protected from water in accordance with the standard IP58, so that you can safely swim with it. Rubber bracelets of different colors can be purchased separately and rearranged in them the main module.
To connect the device to the smartphone, it is enough to attach it to the back wall (if, of course, the smartphone supports NFC), or find it in the list of available Bluetooth devices and create a pair. After that, you need to download SmartBand and Lifelog applications from the Play Market, as well as create an account on the Sony Entertainment Network to store statistics. If you are using a smartphone from another manufacturer, you will need to install the SmartConnect application, without which the bracelet can not be connected. Now it remains to enter the date of birth, height and weight, and if you want to adjust the length of the step while walking and running. You can proceed!
The main work takes over the application Lifelog, which carefully monitors all your actions. The application takes into account literally everything you can do with your smartphone: the number of photos and tracks you listen to, the time spent on social networks, watching TV shows or games. Lifelog automatically identifies the categories of applications you run, including, for example, Bookmate or Kindle as reading books, and Instagram and Facebook as malicious procrastination using social networks. The button with the map shows all your movements per day (week, year, month), in fact, on the map.
By holding the button for two seconds, you can switch between day and night mode. You can find out which mode is currently active in the notification line of your smartphone. Double-tapping allows you to add a note about an event to Lifelog, and if you press a button once and lightly hit the bracelet once, the music pauses or starts playing again. Double-click switches the player to the next track, and triple - to the previous one.
At the end of the day (and, in principle, at any time), you can familiarize yourself with the ruthless statistics and find out how many steps and what route you took, what kind of music you listened to and how good or bad the weather was. Of course, calories are counted, and their consumption at rest is also taken into account. Here you can set a goal, for example - to go through a certain number of steps per day, burn more calories or sleep the required amount of time. Some goals have already been set in advance, based on the average data, for example, eight hours of sleep, 7,500 steps and 2,500 kcal a day, but these goals can be changed and added without any problems, for example, you can take at least ten photos a day or read at least one hour.
The vibration motor installed in the bracelet is used both for sending notifications and as an alarm clock. About the last function, perhaps, it is worth telling in more detail. Surely many of you have met with "smart alarm clocks" that work at the moment when you are in the shallow sleep stage. In this case, the person wakes up easily and turns out to be considerably more vigorous than he woke up in the stage of deep sleep. Such applications use a microphone and an accelerometer as a data source; therefore, information about the movements of a person in a dream turns out to be quite inaccurate, and in the presence of relatives and friends, as well as domestic animals, the use of such alarms loses meaning.
SmartBand receives information directly from your hand, so there is no doubt about their authenticity, besides, you can not worry that the smartphone will fall or be under the pillow, because of what the alarm does not work - you can safely put it at the required distance from the bed ( but only within the scope of Bluetooth).
SmartBand settings are available through the SmartConnect application and allow you to turn on the automatic night mode (notifications other than the alarm will work at a specified time interval), set up the notifications themselves and select additional applications. However, the last, so far, only two - one allows you to turn on the vibration, if you retired from your smartphone further than ten meters, and the other - to manage the music player using a bracelet.
Among the shortcomings, I would point out some flaws in the Lifelog system itself - it takes into account only those actions that you perform using a smartphone, it would be nice, for example, to authorize applications on frequently used social networks and to keep statistics on their use on a laptop and stationary computer. On the other hand, you can synchronize data from several smartphones or, for example, from a smartphone and tablet, the main thing is to use the same account on all devices. I had some difficulties with this - the Sony Entertainment Network account was used on the Sony smartphone, and it was not possible to make friends with another manufacturer’s tablet, Google+, to make friends with them. I hope that this deficiency will be fixed in the next updates. It should be noted that Lifelog is open source, so, as is the case with SmartWatch, you can expect the most unexpected user modifications. Making friends with Smartband fitness trackers such as Run Keeper and Endomondo, so far, unfortunately, there’s only hope for their developers, who will someday add a bracelet to the number of supported devices.
The result was a very unusual and very convenient device that will appeal not only to lovers of a healthy lifestyle, but also to those who want to keep everything under control and try to organize their time. A number of shortcomings that we identified during testing turned out to be mainly software, so the hope for their quick correction is very high.
')
SmartBand is an elastic rubber bracelet with adjustable width and a very stylish metal buckle with the Sony logo. On the inside of the bracelet there is a recess into which a white plastic Core module is inserted with a micro USB connector, a mode switching button and three LEDs that indicate the charge level and mode of operation. By the way, you need to charge your SmartBand once a week.
The material is very pleasant, does not irritate the skin and does not cause the hand to sweat, like plastic straps for watches. The bracelet is perfectly adjustable in width and fits perfectly on the arm. The device is protected from water in accordance with the standard IP58, so that you can safely swim with it. Rubber bracelets of different colors can be purchased separately and rearranged in them the main module.
To connect the device to the smartphone, it is enough to attach it to the back wall (if, of course, the smartphone supports NFC), or find it in the list of available Bluetooth devices and create a pair. After that, you need to download SmartBand and Lifelog applications from the Play Market, as well as create an account on the Sony Entertainment Network to store statistics. If you are using a smartphone from another manufacturer, you will need to install the SmartConnect application, without which the bracelet can not be connected. Now it remains to enter the date of birth, height and weight, and if you want to adjust the length of the step while walking and running. You can proceed!
The main work takes over the application Lifelog, which carefully monitors all your actions. The application takes into account literally everything you can do with your smartphone: the number of photos and tracks you listen to, the time spent on social networks, watching TV shows or games. Lifelog automatically identifies the categories of applications you run, including, for example, Bookmate or Kindle as reading books, and Instagram and Facebook as malicious procrastination using social networks. The button with the map shows all your movements per day (week, year, month), in fact, on the map.
By holding the button for two seconds, you can switch between day and night mode. You can find out which mode is currently active in the notification line of your smartphone. Double-tapping allows you to add a note about an event to Lifelog, and if you press a button once and lightly hit the bracelet once, the music pauses or starts playing again. Double-click switches the player to the next track, and triple - to the previous one.
At the end of the day (and, in principle, at any time), you can familiarize yourself with the ruthless statistics and find out how many steps and what route you took, what kind of music you listened to and how good or bad the weather was. Of course, calories are counted, and their consumption at rest is also taken into account. Here you can set a goal, for example - to go through a certain number of steps per day, burn more calories or sleep the required amount of time. Some goals have already been set in advance, based on the average data, for example, eight hours of sleep, 7,500 steps and 2,500 kcal a day, but these goals can be changed and added without any problems, for example, you can take at least ten photos a day or read at least one hour.
The vibration motor installed in the bracelet is used both for sending notifications and as an alarm clock. About the last function, perhaps, it is worth telling in more detail. Surely many of you have met with "smart alarm clocks" that work at the moment when you are in the shallow sleep stage. In this case, the person wakes up easily and turns out to be considerably more vigorous than he woke up in the stage of deep sleep. Such applications use a microphone and an accelerometer as a data source; therefore, information about the movements of a person in a dream turns out to be quite inaccurate, and in the presence of relatives and friends, as well as domestic animals, the use of such alarms loses meaning.
SmartBand receives information directly from your hand, so there is no doubt about their authenticity, besides, you can not worry that the smartphone will fall or be under the pillow, because of what the alarm does not work - you can safely put it at the required distance from the bed ( but only within the scope of Bluetooth).
SmartBand settings are available through the SmartConnect application and allow you to turn on the automatic night mode (notifications other than the alarm will work at a specified time interval), set up the notifications themselves and select additional applications. However, the last, so far, only two - one allows you to turn on the vibration, if you retired from your smartphone further than ten meters, and the other - to manage the music player using a bracelet.
Among the shortcomings, I would point out some flaws in the Lifelog system itself - it takes into account only those actions that you perform using a smartphone, it would be nice, for example, to authorize applications on frequently used social networks and to keep statistics on their use on a laptop and stationary computer. On the other hand, you can synchronize data from several smartphones or, for example, from a smartphone and tablet, the main thing is to use the same account on all devices. I had some difficulties with this - the Sony Entertainment Network account was used on the Sony smartphone, and it was not possible to make friends with another manufacturer’s tablet, Google+, to make friends with them. I hope that this deficiency will be fixed in the next updates. It should be noted that Lifelog is open source, so, as is the case with SmartWatch, you can expect the most unexpected user modifications. Making friends with Smartband fitness trackers such as Run Keeper and Endomondo, so far, unfortunately, there’s only hope for their developers, who will someday add a bracelet to the number of supported devices.
The result was a very unusual and very convenient device that will appeal not only to lovers of a healthy lifestyle, but also to those who want to keep everything under control and try to organize their time. A number of shortcomings that we identified during testing turned out to be mainly software, so the hope for their quick correction is very high.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/226601/
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