Smart watch, do you find the right direction before the product?

Wearable wave has arisen, has been a star-class test aquatic products appear, believe that 2014, wearable equipment will be a concentrated outbreak of the year.　　Samsung, Sony and many domestic manufacturers have introduced smart watches and other wearable products, but so far, can be said to be truly revolutionary, or the rapid popularization of products did not appear, can wear market prospects are still broad, even for many startups, can wear is still a blue sea!　　For the smart watch, Gofu is the identity, cock silk is the function, smart watch to make what kind of, for the current chaotic intelligent watch products, I from the point of view of software and hardware to talk about their views. Why must it be Android? At present, most of the products are still using an Android system, a lot of smart watch design ideas is to do subtraction of mobile phones, shrinking the screen, shrinking the battery, but is using the phone's system and processor, the phone is also the design of the thinking and mode, that this is a smart watch.　　Therefore, for many similar products, it is difficult to say that he is a watch, more like a mobile phone on the hand. Android itself is designed for mobile phones and flat-panel designs, and for watches, there is not just too much functional redundancy, but also Android's need for hardware and lower operating efficiencies, making wearable devices that were very stringent in terms of power requirements even worse, no matter how powerful, A watch that needs to be recharged every day is hard for me to satisfy.　　Even the combination of wireless charging, convenient charging, OLED screens and even electronic ink screens is a palliative for a critical experience. So, can you consider abandoning the Android platform? For many companies, it's a typical doctrine, Android platform has a wealth of hardware and software resources, has a very large number of solution providers, has a very good development environment and tools, and is therefore, many people think that wearable equipment development without technical barriers, Android platform has become a lot of products for granted choice. So, when everyone is using this set of paths, can you consider abandoning such an attractive Android system.　　Take a smart watch, most of the products are still connected to the mobile phone through Bluetooth, as a convenient information reminders, display extension terminals, or expand some of the weather, music, sleep quality, Jibu and other functions, and for these features many embedded systems can be fully implemented, do not require a huge Android system. Why do we need dual core or even four cores? The current smart watch products, most of which use Android more than 4.0 of the system, so more than 512M ram,1g Hz above the single core and even multi-core processors become standard, many companies even the dual-core processor as one of the selling point of the watch, I think for a watch product, The processor as a selling point to the main publicity, it may be the bright spot of the product is really little poor. Without the Android system, what kind of processor performance does the watch need? For most 240x240 resolutionSmall screen, just time display, music playback, such as simple applications, dual-core processors in addition to power consumption and as a publicity stunt, there is no other significance. Android apps are driving up the bottom line of hardware configuration, so the price of a watch is not going to come down, and for most products it's a little more than a 2000-dollar price. And even some of the main price of domestic products, more than 500 yuan price still lacks enough attraction.　　And if you give up the Android platform, the choice of hardware platform is much larger, then the price will naturally have more space. MOTO x X8 and Apple M7, the use of this coprocessor has in fact provided a good reference for wearable devices, MOTO's "natural language processor", "Context computing processor" to the audio processing speech recognition independent, so that users can be pragmatic mobile phone standby mode, mobile phone at any time to listen to orders, Ready to start. And the M7 processor, the independent processing of the relevant sensors, and their common point is that some need to be ready to independent of the function, do not have to enable although powerful, but also a large power consumption of the main processor, so that the phone can real-time processing of some sensor data and real-time response, but also can have a very good performance.　　The coprocessor model for Apple and Moto is not new, it's not much of a complex technology, but it's a huge change. For smart watches, I think what needs to be done is the phone's coprocessor, so, after Android, you just need a coprocessor-level CPU on the processor, taking Apple's M7 as an example, M7 is a LPC1800 series processor by NXP Foundry, The processor based on the CORTEX-M3 architecture, the frequency of 180MHz, for the sensor data acquisition and processing is sufficient. Cortex-m3/m4 I think is very suitable for smart watch application of the processor architecture, NXP and St have a very mature products and solutions, and power control is more advantages, in the performance of the Intelligent Watch interface interaction, data processing and so on are already more than sufficient, More than 10 yuan to more than 30 yuan a piece of price is also very competitive. So for smart watches, I prefer products that use the CORTEX-M3 kernel with STM32.　　Processor performance is just right, power performance is excellent, prices can be a breakthrough, why not? Smart watch, what kind of function do we need? At the beginning of this article I have a joke, watch, Gofu is identity, cock silk is the function. For Samsung, Sony, Apple products, due to the strong brand influence, identity symbol is still possible, for many domestic brands and even startups, this need to be carefully considered, which is related to product positioning and user groups. Smart watch products, fashion, scientific and technological appearance naturally needless to say, novelty, playful function is also very important, however, many existing products, design ideas on the wrong is the productionThe product cannot escape the bloated body, and functional innovation has become a chicken, watch design and positioning, functional innovation and trade-offs, is the product design should be considered at the beginning of the problem ' determine the function of the watch before or the need to determine the positioning of the watch, in the above has been explained,　　The Mac and Moto Coprocessor model provides a good reference the watch is not to replace the mobile phone, I believe also can not replace the mobile phone, so I really do not know how many watches also can plug the need to call cards, and some watches in such a mini keyboard still designed to reply to the text of the function is a wonderful work! For functional design, I think the function of smart watch is mainly in three aspects: the first category is the mobile phone can do but inconvenient and not economic functions such as pedometer, sleep quality monitoring, these functions require uninterrupted data acquisition, the need for interaction and processor performance is not a lot of If the phone is handed over for a long time to occupy the phone's processor resources, the processor needs to remain awake.　　For a mobile phone without a coprocessor, the smart watch is their coprocessor, which collects and stores the data locally, and when it is operated on the mobile phone, it is shown that the combination is more efficient. The second category is a convenient information reminder preview functions such as information, schedule reminders, text preview is enough, supplemented by simple operation on it, many watches even emphasize can reply to the message on the watch, this I think the significance is not.　　This type of functionality is an extension of mobile display and interaction, after all, with the phone's big screen, out of the phone, including a single hand operation is not so convenient, so a certain degree of expansion will bring a lot of convenience, but for texting, phone such operations I think or mobile phone on the operation is better.　　The third category is the mobile phone control function used to find mobile phones, control photos, these functions are convenient and practical small functions, as for wifi connection, music, FM these functions, can only say to see the specific positioning bar, I think it is not so necessary. Smart watch as the vanguard of wearable equipment, in the early stages of development has received enough attention, the above share of my smart watch and wearable hardware some views, personal humble opinion, sincerely hope to communicate with you.