Sony’s new wearable is smart and all heart

With wearable computers the next area that manufacturers are fighting for a piece of your wallet and body with, Sony is ready with one that does a little more than fitness, tracking stress, too.

Unfortunately, we all have some stress sitting in our body somewhere, and while there’s always the possibility of a holiday around the corner, tracking stress is something we’ve not yet seen a gadget do.

Sony’s attempt to curtail excess stress will come from tracking it and relating it back to fitness and excitement levels throughout the course of a day, possibility giving you a way of working out what made you angry or sad and dealing with it, instead of letting it creep up on you and gradually break you down.

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To handle this, Sony has updated its modular SmartBand concept to become the SmartBand 2, increasing the technology inside to being more than motion based from before with heart rate tracking now thrown in the form-factor.

The combination of an accelerometer and heart rate sensor can now work together with Sony’s software to apparently track your progress via the Sony Lifelog app and see how you’re going via your pulse and heart rate, as well as movement, telling you the time of the day when perhaps things weren’t going too well.

Sleep tracking is also part of the equation, with automatic sleep detection part of the programming, while an alarm clock will vibrate to waker someone up.

And that vibrating also plays into other things, with vibrations for when you get a phone call or a message, with support for Twitter and email extended to the Sony SmartBand 2.

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“We set out to create the most advanced wearable at this section of the market,” said John Featherstone, Head of Business Development for Sony Mobile in the APAC region, adding that “SmartBand 2 has the capability to deliver, and make biometric data meaningful for users within Lifelog.”

“Not only does it represent a powerful vision of how consumers can learn more about themselves – it allows us to explore exciting new opportunities with development partners,” he said.

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On the technical side, Sony has told GadgetGuy that the SmartBand 2 takes on a similar form-factor to its older sibling with a plastic block held inside a silicon band, with IP68 waterproofing extended to the SmartBand 2 module complete with a capless USB charger like what Sony uses in its Xperia Z5 smartphones.

Battery life is a little different this generation, with Sony only expecting two days of life compared to the original with closer to a week, though we expect this can be attributed to the heart rate sensor and how often it is being used.

Pricing, though, is more or less spot on with the original generation, with Sony releasing its SmartBand 2 for $199 at JB HiFi with compatibility for iOS and Android.

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