Sensors are dotted around the strap, and include the now expected heart rate sensor and accelerometer, plus sensors to take the temperature of skin, blood pressure, and even how much sweat your body is producing. The six sensors are modular, and developers can swap them out for alternatives.
Data collected by this sensor array is displayed on the large touchscreen, along with the date and time, plus a few cool new features. The first is a dashboard, where information collected on blood pressure, a step count, and your heart rate is shown, along with a comparison to stats taken over the past week.
The Simband can activate all its sensors at once, and show a real-time feed of how your body is functioning, while a “spot check” gives a 20-second overview of the same stats, and compares them to the last quick check the device performed.
Samsung wants to emphasize the difference between the Simband and a regular fitness band. During the developer conference where its plans were discussed, Samsung invited insurance company Kaiser to talk about how lifestyle change is more important than looking at a daily step count, in the quest for improving health. Quoted by GigaOm.com, a Kaiser executive said data collected by wearable health devices like the Simband should “allow them to take action, instead of being focused on isolated metrics.”
The Simband and the cloud-based SAMI platform to which it will be connected are key to this philosophy. Data is supposed to be shared with healthcare professionals, who can then create personalized diet, fitness, and health plans.
However, it’s still not quite ready for general sale. The Simband demonstrated is a development unit, but Samsung has now opened the device up to developers, and produced a software development kit with a set of APIs to incorporate existing software into the system.
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