The emergence of smart phones has completely subverted the daily life of the public, and has also spawned a number of new smart devices. Among the various products connected with mobile phones, smart watches have become a key link and gradually integrated into people's intelligent life. The smart watch, which seems to rise suddenly, has already gone through decades of development, and its functions are increasingly enriched, and it is more closely connected with the life of the public.

WiWatch RS

The Rise Of Smart Watches

The development of things is the unity of progressiveness and tortuosity, and smart watches are no exception. As early as the 1920s, traditional watch manufacturers have been looking for new forms of watches, trying to add other practical functions on the basis of displaying time. The first attempt was made by a British company, which launched a watch with a built-in scrolling map navigator in 1972, giving the watch a simple GPS function. This has greatly inspired the whole industry and opened the road of smart watch research and development.

In the following decades, many practitioners have tried and launched many products with the characteristics of the times. From the screen change of LED screen and LCD screen to the change of calculator, voice prompt, call and other functions, the watch is gradually developing towards the direction of intelligence, and is more and more closely connected with mobile phones and even life. Until around 2014, Google, Samsung, Huawei, Apple and other major manufacturers have successively released smart watch products, driving them into the consumer market and constantly refreshing the public's understanding of smart watches.

According to a survey data from Canalys Counterpoint, the global smart watch shipments in 2016-2021 are in a spiral upward trend. Among them, with the epidemic gradually under control, productivity also recovered, and the shipment volume increased significantly in 2021, exceeding 100 million for the first time, an increase of 28.31% compared with 2020. Looking back at the data of domestic smart watches, the overall trend is basically consistent with the global smart watch shipments from 2016 to 2022, reaching the peak in 2021, close to 40 million shipments. It can be seen that for Chinese people, the acceptance of smart watches is also increasing.

The above data seems to convey the good prospects of the watch market, but it is not. Similar to the development of the mobile phone industry, when the industry chain is gradually improved, smart watches also gradually appear the phenomenon of similar appearance and similar functions. Naturally, manufacturers have also anticipated the difficulties that watches may face and have begun to explore other development possibilities of smart watches.

WiWatch S plus 

Sports Watch Vs Health Watch

Return to the function of the watch itself. Presumably, in most people's perception, watches are linked to sports in most cases, in addition to NFC or related notification functions. From the perspective of the whole watch market, sports watches are indeed one of the major categories. It mainly monitors the heart rate, blood oxygen, duration, and movement status during exercise, provides users with guidance from professional databases, records the movement track, mileage, and other data, and generates corresponding movement reports for users to understand their own movement.

At present, almost all watches on the market have built-in sports related functions, but there are differences in function types and database integrity. In addition, many more professional sports watches have been derived, which can provide various sports monitoring for professional athletes, and have the characteristics of waterproof, sweat-proof and dust-proof. From this point of view, sports watches have certain uses for both ordinary and professional users.

In recent years, smart watches have appeared such functions as sleep detection, sedentary reminder, drinking reminder, snoring monitoring, which are basically related to human life and health. Throughout the whole industry, it is not difficult to find that smart watches are gradually developing towards "health", and the author will temporarily call them "health smart watches". It not only conforms to the established development track of the sports watch, but also derives the new function of "health". In today's environment, it is undoubtedly a very popular product. From the perspective of the existing health functions, they are still only on the surface, not going deep into the real life of users, but they provide a relatively clear path for the future development of smart watches.

Health Is The Eternal Topic Of Mankind

To some extent, the new technologies born through scientific research are almost all aimed at solving the needs of human physical and mental health. Therefore, in the whole development history of mankind, "health" is an eternal topic, especially in the post-epidemic era, health issues are deeply concerned by the public. Smart watches take health as the main line of development, which meets the current mainstream demand. There are also relevant scientific research experiments in the industry.

In the Lancet, the top global medical journal, there is a paper from researchers at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, entitled "On the performance of wearable devices in detecting COVID-19 infection: a systematic evaluation". This paper mainly searched the research articles and programs on the use of wearable devices to identify COVID-19 infection published between 2020 and July 27, 2021, and then identified and screened 3196 records, and comprehensively analyzed 12 articles and research programs.

Abnormal physiological signals, such as temperature change, heart rate variability and other indicators, to some extent point to COVID-19 infection. If relevant hardware is inserted on the smart watch for physiological detection, can COVID-19 be detected. However, contrary to expectations, there is overlap between influenza data and COVID-19 data, and smart watches alone are obviously not as accurate as medical methods.

Therefore, this study also has great limitations at present. Monitoring COVID-19 infection with wearable devices still needs more detailed follow-up research. Nevertheless, it is not difficult for us to see some facts, that is, the possibility of using wearable devices for a wider range of health monitoring. On the other hand, some trends in the industry can also be seen from the actions taken by mobile phone manufacturers. For example, the Glory Earbud 3 Pro launched by Glory tried to measure body temperature through the human ear; The forthcoming Apple Watch 8 exposed by foreign media will support temperature measurement; The smile proposal projects launched by OPPO around the world are all around the topic of "health".

Today, starting from the same river, different tributaries are separated in the middle, and finally converge into the same sea. Manufacturers seem to have reached an agreement on the development of smart watches and even wearable devices. Of course, the excellent experience of smart watches is also related to the system, UI interface, interaction system and other experiences. In the future, wearable devices such as smart watches may usher in a real revolution, but "health", the eternal topic of human beings, is bound to run through all the time.