Watches used to be so simple. One quick wind could power them for days at first, and then we got batteries that could last for years. Then came smartwatches and fitness trackers that do everything from manage our schedules and communications to keep track of heart rate and blood oxygen levels, not to mention our moment-to-moment location on the surface of the planet.
All that functionality demands a lot more battery power and frequent recharging, often with odd and inconvenient proprietary charging cords or docks. And time spent on the charger is time not spent quantifying yourself; a corruption in your complete fitness picture!
File this among definite first-world problems, but power-thirsty wearables are an irritating inefficiency in their promised functionality nonetheless. Enter the $169 Matrix PowerWatch, a crowdfunded smartwatch that harvests body heat to power its step, sleep and calorie-tracking capabilities. A new version also promises to deliver smartphone notifications to your wrist as well.
If you take the PowerWatch off, it saves all your data and powers into an idle mode that it can sustain for up to two years.
While it’s pretty basic compared full-functioned smartwatches from the likes of Apple or Garmin, the PowerWatch is an intriguing option for travelers, backcountry fans and anyone else that spends a lot of time on the go or just has a general disdain for the countless chargers that now pollute our lives.
Moreover, it’s a small step towards actually fulfilling the exciting promise of wearable technology, which is erasing all the friction points that prevent a device from essentially becoming a permanent extension of our bodies. In other words, it may look like a basic smartwatch, but it’s also a first, quick, easy and non-invasive step towards our cyborg future. And what do you know? It’s not scary at all.
Well, not entirely, there is still one friction point with any watch – the literal friction point between the device and the skin. As a dedicated smartwatch and fitness tracker wearer, I can attest that exercising with anything like this and never taking it off or cleaning it can lead to a pretty nasty rash after just a few days.
So maybe we’re still not ready to be cyborgs, but literally harnessing our personal power source to run our gadgets still seems like a good start.