Wearable Technology in 2024: Predictions, Devices and Stories to Come

Devices

Moved by Evie Ring

It seems that the wait for Evie Ring is finally over. It is coming to our fingers in 2024. It is a smart ring whose main target audience is female users, and which is supposed to compete with the equally smart Oura ring. In the last 12 months, he managed to convince a large part of the female market, who recognized the advantages of wearable devices on the finger.

The first task the Evie Ring has is to actually be a quality wearable device. The company has some great ideas on how to use medical sensors and how to fast-track FDA approval, but Movano is still a "start-up" developing its first device.

It would also be wise to add support for Android devices. Currently, the ring only works with Apple devices.

Apple Watch X

All the rumors point to a special edition of the Apple Watch coming for the device's 10th anniversary in 2024. There is talk of a major design change and new sensors for sleep apnea and blood pressure. Among other things, Apple will have to win a patent battle with Masimo.

In addition to the presentation of the touch device, we expect that Apple will also take a step forward in the field of tracking good feelings. It's focused on big health metrics, but we think it's lagging behind in the field of feel-good devices. If we just look at where Whoop, Oura and now Garmin have taken things, we can see how much Apple is still doing. We expect a rebalancing this year.

Whoop 5.0

In addition to the innovations presented above, it seems likely that we will see a revamped Whoop device in 2024, although little has been said about it until now. As a reminder, Whoop is a very popular fitness device that works very discreetly on the wrist. In fact, at first glance it works like a regular fitness band. Inside, however, there are quite a few advanced sensors that make athletes frantically buy this and similar devices. 

The current Whoop 4.0 was released in 2021, so it would really be about time to get an updated device. As a simple sensor vehicle, the hardware is relatively unimportant.

However, we would like to upgrade the heart rate sensor and increase the battery life.

Oura Ring Gen 4

The Oura Ring Gen 3 smart ring is also available from 2021.

In this čas, the manufacturer did not čstand still and presented the upgraded look of Oura Ring Gen 3 Horizon.

Although Oura is still the leader in the field of smart rings, it is increasingly being challenged by models such as Evie Ring, Circular Ring Slim and Ultrahuman Ring Air.

With numerous improvements, competitors are only approaching the level of comfort and design of the Oura.

Samsung Galaxy Ring

The smart ring market is one of the most interesting subcategories of wearable technology. So far, none of the biggest technological players has made a significant contribution.

Samsung regularly publishes patents for its smart ring, and it looks like 2024 could be the year they officially launch the product.

Although it seems unlikely that Samsung could take the category up a notch in terms of raw innovation, a tech giant tackling smart rings would put the category on the mainstream map.

Apple Vision Pro

Do you remember the big "spatial computing" device that Apple unveiled at WWDC? You know, that device that makes your laptop screen the size of a room? Well, it will be released this year.

Although it is a niche product, it will be interesting to see what kind of response, if any, it will trigger.

It will also be interesting to see what impact it will have on the rest of the AR/XR industry. If this product is going to penetrate consumer consciousness, it should probably happen now.

Stories

Blood pressure

The world of wearables and smartwatches has been waiting for a new big sensor for quite some time - and it looks like it will arrive this year in the area of blood pressure measurement.

Samsung has an existing solution on the Galaxy Watch that only works if you also have a Samsung Galaxy smartphone, so its appeal is limited.

Smart watches that can detect high/low blood pressure and raise awareness among the millions of people suffering from hypertension would be a great asset.

This technology was announced for the Apple Watch X, but many developers in the world of wearables are working on it. Therefore, it will be interesting to see who will manage to provide this functionality and implement a useful and educational function in watches.

In addition, the signature of the regulatory authorities will be required to obtain a license for use. This means that it will be necessary to overcome quite a few big obstacles along the way.

Sleep apnea

A few years ago, sleep apnea became a central topic in the development of wearable devices. Fitbit and Withings also offer measurement of changes in oxygen levels during sleep. Nevertheless, due to restrictions, since they are not officially medical devices, they cannot talk about sleep apnea.

We expect things to move forward in this area with more prescribed detection of apnea problems on common, everyday devices.

This is another feature that has been announced for the Apple Watch X, and you'd be surprised if sleep apnea isn't a major talking point at this year's Samsung, Pixel Watch, and even Huawei releases.

Blood sugar

Non-invasive blood glucose monitoring seems very unlikely this year. But by the end of 2024 we will definitely be closer.

There are many companies with promising solutions, such as Afon from the United Kingdom, RF-Sensor from Movano and Actxa from Singapore.

While a solution for type 1 diabetics may be unrealistic for now, something that can detect spikes or unhealthy blood sugar levels in pre-diabetics could have huge societal benefits.

Therefore, expect significant progress to be made in this area this year.

Artificial intelligence and wearables

The year 2023 was a breakthrough for artificial intelligence and everything indicates that things will not change this year. However, we can expect a shift from fairly useless concepts to useful and useful implementations. The industry of wearable devices could play a key role here.

The potential that artificial intelligence brings to the field of wearable technology is to connect scattered data points and make something unique out of them. In practice, this could mean long-term analysis of blood pressure data and their association with sleep patterns, which ultimately provide a whole new dimension of self-knowledge.

In any case, we are talking about big goals here, which may depend on regulation. Despite everything, this year we expect the first concrete steps, most likely on the wings of Apple's Quartz platform.

Patent War 2.0

It seems we're back in the patent war era of the early days of wearable technology. Quite a few "conflicts" are current at the moment, which you should pay attention to. One such case is certainly the case of Apple v. Masim and also Apple v. AliveCor. Oura also has strong competition, for example the companies Ultrahuman and Circular.