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WIMM – Wearable Android Platform

By Dave Roberts   

on August 30, 2011    No ratings yet.

Posted in Outdoor ArticlesAndroid, GPS, The Outdoor Geek, The Outdoor Geek - Outdoor Tech, apps, running, shiny shiny

WIMM – Wearable Android Platform

WIMM Labs recently announced a multifunctional, wearable android device.  Will this take over from your GPS watch and mp3 player soon? Following on from our review of android running apps, one of the issues we found was carrying the phone with you. This would be a much more elegant solution. It’s also water resistant, so along with a strap and presumably a Bluetooth heart rate monitor,  you’ve got a running GPS watch to rival a Garmin. It also looks so much cooler than a Garmin, as you can see from the picture, and much more practical to take out than a mobile strapped to your arm or stuffed into a tiny mesh pocket. It also looks like it’s being touted as a cycle computer, click here to see what other concepts they’ve got in store.

While the technical side of this looks impressive, it all depends on the apps that come with it. We were disappointed recently by the apps out there for runners, so we’ll be keeping a close eye on what’s developed on this platform. The screen’s a tiny 32x36cm, which may just be large enough to use for OS mapping and as an outdoors GPS. For me, that would be a killer app, as you only need to see a square and a small area around it in order to pinpoint yourself on a paper map. Why carry a bulky GPS if you can perform all the more useful functions from the comfort of your own wrist watch?

The specs are repeated below, but the notable omission for me is the battery life. I’d expect it to be sufficient for a decent long run, but if it’ll be useful on a wildcamp as an mp3 player is another question. There’s also no clue as to how much this will cost, so we’ll be saving our beer tokens to get our mitts on one of these for certain!

Technical Specs.

  • BI-MODAL DISPLAY
  • CAPACITIVE TOUCH SCREEN
  • WI-FI
  • BLUETOOTH
  • ACCELEROMETER
  • MAGNETOMETER
  • AUDIBLE AND TACTILE ALERTS
  • UP TO 32GB MEMORY
  • WATER RESISTANT
  • 32×36×12.5mm
  • 22g

 

Take a look at the video below for more information.


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Dave Roberts

Dave Roberts founded Walk Eryri in 2004, with the aim of providing routes that are off the beaten track. Walk Eryri is now part of Mud and Routes which continues to provide more off beat routes and walks in Snowdonia and beyond. Dave has been exploring the hills of Eryri for over thirty years, and is a qualified Mountain Leader. Dave also established Walk up Snowdon, Walk up Scafell Pike and Walk up Ben Nevis just to mention a few.

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