After a while floating through the seemingly endless pages of tech startup projects vying for your funding on Kickstarter it becomes clear there will forever be a very thin line between helpful tools for our day-to-day lives and complete madness. From smart-belts that follow tech-fashion in tracking your steps, keeping you healthy through gamification and notifications that aim to keep you paranoid about sitting down for too long to projects that bend IoT to the advantage of feeding your pets from the other side of the country while watching them eat via a connection between your smartphone and a ‘easyFeed’ dispenser in your house.
[easy-tweet tweet=”SGNL will use bone conduction to allow phone calls through your index finger” hashtags=”wearable, tech, wearable”]
This week SGNL want you to Touch Your Sound. Well, what does that actually mean? Basically SGNL will use bone conduction from your wrist to allow you to hear phone calls through your index finger, something that is bound to make you look like the coolest dude in the early-naughties.
As with most startup technology the thought of this product seems like a silly one to adopt, but then again who could have believed we’d be so obsessed with sharing pictures of ourselves with dog ears superimposed onto our heads before the Snapchat update a few months ago?
The stuff of kids’ make-believe games looks to become reality with SNGL’s aim to have have everyone walking around talking into their hands all while offering what smartwatches have so far failed to do with the ability to talk on the go. The Body Conduction Unit (BCU) can be nicely disguised by a fashionable watch face and of course also includes a built-in activity tracker that connects to an app on a smartphone.
[easy-tweet tweet=”The stuff of kids’ make-believe games looks to become reality” hashtags=”SGNL, tech, wearable”]
Formerly Samsung’s TipTalk, I think it’s fair to say the breakaway startup made the right choice in changing the name to SGNL. The product has been developed to take the form of a smart watch strap (requiring the user to add to their smartband collection) that allows you to answer phone calls using your fingertip by simply sticking your finger in your ear and using the band as a receiver through its integrated microphone.
Created as a solution for people who lose their earpieces, SNGL will allow users to leave their phone in their pockets or bags while simply raising their hand to answer calls without any extra wires or hassles. The team behind SGNL take credit for the product having a built in ‘background noise’ reducer in the form of putting your finger in your ear.
The strap design allows for smartwatch mounting to combine your wearable technology into a hybrid application straight from your wrist connecting to your phone via bluetooth. With products moving towards this ‘deviceless’ period could we possibly expect the smartphone to become a thing of the past? Surely it could only a matter of time if technology like SGNL takes off.
SGNL looks to move into mass production by December 2016 and has raised over 150% of the funding needed. Check out the product video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40LfELeoAIw