Overview Sony SmartBand

The number of portable gadgets is growing every day, and two, perhaps, the most notable group - a "smart watches" and sports bracelets trackers. If the first is used to interact with a smartphone and receive notifications, the second - track your physical activity. The Sony decided not to limit the clock SmartWatch, and released yet and electronic bracelet, whose functions, however, are not limited by counting steps and involve a variety of aspects of human life. We offer you a review of this unusual gadget.







SmartBand is a flexible rubber bracelet with adjustable width and very stylish metal buckle with logo Sony. On the inside of the bracelet has a recess into which the white plastic module with connector Core micro USB, the mode button and three LEDs that indicate the charge level and mode of operation. By the way, you must charge the SmartBand once a week.

The material is very pleasant, not irritating to the skin and does not cause the arm to sweat as plastic watch straps. The bracelet is perfectly adjusted to the width and perfectly kept on hand. The device is protected against water in accordance with the standard of IP58, so that with it you can safely swim. Rubber bracelets of different colors can be purchased separately and rearrange them in the main module.





To connect the device to your phone enough to attach it to the back wall (unless, of course, the smartphone supports NFC), or find it in the list of available Bluetooth devices and create a pair. You will then need to download the application from Play Market SmartBand and Lifelog, and also to have an account with Sony Entertainment Network storage statistics. If you use a smartphone from another manufacturer, you will need to install the application SmartConnect, without which the bracelet will not be able to connect. Now we have to enter the date of birth, height and weight, but if you want to adjust the stride length during walking and jogging. Can begin!

Most of the work takes on the application Lifelog, which carefully monitors all your actions. Appendix counted literally everything that you can do with your smartphone: the number of photos and listen to the tracks, the time spent on social networks, browsing or game series. Lifelog automatically determines the category of running your applications, setting off, for example, Bookmate Kindle or as reading books, Instagram and Facebook - as a malicious procrastination using social networks. Button with a map showing all of your moving day (week, year, month), actually, on the map.



Hold the button for two seconds to switch between day and night operation. Learn about which mode is currently active in the notification bar can be your smartphone. Double-clicking allows you to add a note about Lifelog any event, if one push of a button and gently hit the bracelet once - the music will be on pause or start playing again. Double clicking toggles the player to the next track and triple - the previous.

At the end of the day (and, in principle, at any time) you can see the statistics of the ruthless and learn how many steps and what route you went, what, in this case, listen to music and how good or bad the weather was. Certainly considered and calories burned, and their consumption at rest is also taken into account. Here you can set the target, for example - take a day a certain number of steps, burn more calories, or the amount of time needed to sleep. Some targets already set in advance based on the average data such - eight hours of sleep, steps 7500 and 2500 calories a day, but these goals can be changed without any problems and add new ones, for example - do at least ten photos of the day, or at least read one hour.



Vibration motor mounted in a bracelet used for transmitting notifications and as an alarm. On the last function, perhaps, is to tell more. I'm sure many of you have met with "smart alarms", which will be triggered at the moment when you are in the stage of a shallow sleep. In this case, the person wakes up easily and is considerably more cheerful than being woken in the stage of deep sleep. Such applications are used as the data source microphone and accelerometer, so the information about the movements of the person in the dream is quite inaccurate, well, in the presence of relatives and friends, as well as the use of domestic animals such alarms altogether meaningless.

SmartBand receives information directly from your hand, so you can not doubt their authenticity, the same can not worry that the smartphone will fall or be under the pillow, because of what the Service does not work - you can safely put it at a desired distance from the bed ( but only within the limits of Bluetooth).



SmartBand settings are available through the app SmartConnect and let you enable automatic night mode (in a given period of time will not trigger any notification, except alarm), set up notifications themselves and select additional applications. However, the latter, yet all-just two - one allows you to include vibration, if you remove your smartphone from more than ten meters, and the other - to control the music player with the help of the bracelet.

Among the shortcomings I have noted some imperfection of the system Lifelog - it takes into account only those actions that you perform using a smartphone, a good idea, would be, for example, authorized applications commonly used in social networks and their use to keep statistics on the laptop and desktop computer. On the other hand, you can synchronize data from multiple smartphones, or, for example, with smart phones and tablets, the main thing - to use on all devices the same account. With this I am having some difficulty - used on your Sony account Sony Entertainment Network, and on the tablet from another manufacturer - Google+, befriend them, despite all efforts failed. I hope that this deficiency be corrected in the next update. It should be noted that Lifelog is open source, so that, as in the case with the SmartWatch, you can expect the most unexpected custom modifications. Befriend Smartband with fitness tracker type Run Keeper and Endomondo, yet, unfortunately, but here are the only hope for their developers who someday will add a bracelet in the number of supported devices.

The result was a very unusual and very handy device that will appeal not only to fans of a healthy lifestyle, but also to those who seek to keep everything under control and is trying to organize their time. A number of shortcomings that we identified during the testing were mainly software, so that the hope of their speedy correction is very large.

Source: habrahabr.ru/company/sonyxperia/blog/226601/

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