Another day, another wearable design. This time it’s something called the Kairos T-Band, a watch band that connects to your normal watch and enables all sorts of exciting things like step tracking and notifications. I’ve seen a few of these sorts of things over the past year – one company hid everything inside a nice leather band and didn’t include a screen – and this one has just enough going for it that it’s probably not a massive scam.
The basic band, called the ND, has no display and simply vibrates notifications and sends sensing data to your phone.
On board Kairos OS will be able to push notifications such as text messages, incoming calls, and also push alerts from available apps via a discreet multi-color LED indicator and/or vibrator motor. On top of having multiple sensors such as 9-axis gyroscope, accelerometer, compass and optical sensor, the ND model also gets GSR (Galvanic Skin Sensor) which detects skin temperature and sweat.
Other models will have touch sensitive displays. The $1,200 model includes a mechanical watch.
Everything pictured on the Indiegogo page is possible – curved displays, motor vibrations, and sensors included – but it’s up to the Kairos folks to put them all together. Whether or not they succeed is still in question but it’s a clever idea and a clever implementation. I expect to see more of these hitting the market this year so this won’t be the last smart band we see.