Curie to Bring New Dimensions in Wearables!

In the past year, seeing the kinds of wearables doing what Smartphones can do, I wasn’t much excited about wearables; however after looking at what Intelhas demonstrated in CES 2015, a button sized SoC called Curie, I get to believe that it will be a game changer in wearables and would let Intel do what it couldn’t do with Smartphone chips even after spending billions of dollars to gain that market. This intelligent button can unleash many newer possibilities which we haven’t seen in wearables so far, I will talk about it a little later, let’s first look at what it is.

That’s the Curie, Brian Krzanich; CEO of Intel is showing holding it between his three fingers at CES. Wow! That’s a perfect size suitable for the IoT world where it can invisibly rule that world. It’s powered by Quark SE CPU, 80 kB SRAM, 384 kB flash memory, BTLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) radio, integrated battery charging PMIC and an integrated 6-axis combo sensor with an accelerometer and gyroscope that supports gesture recognition. Wow! with all that on a cute circular PCB, it’s the smallest! It has open source RTOS. Curie is said to be a platform that can be versatile for wearable makers to slip it into anything – ring, watch, fitness gizmos, eyewear, jewellery, apparel and virtually anything which can be easily put on your body. With low power and rechargeable battery, that’s ideal for wearable. It’s just out of Intel labs, to be available in the market by 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] half of this year, but was ready for Krzanich to play with it and show some gimmicks during his keynote in CES. It’s said to be coming with Intel IQ software kits that contain host of applications including apps, device drivers, algorithms, connectivity, biometrics, and cloud integration and so on.

Now let’s imagine how it can cling into many things for different purposes in our society. It reminds me about James Bond movies 😎 where he uses tiny tracking devices, micro eyes, spying devices…. Are we going to see real Bonds everywhere in today’s society, spying and securing the society? In developing countries, catching corruption in time and building healthy societies can be initiated. Interestingly, the devices built with Curie can bring up many possibilities for women safety and security as it can slip into jewellery, bracelet, pendant, and so on and can provide real-time help in case of any distress signs. Can such devices be stolen? Thieves beware!

Only concern to have is it really provides the needed performance and battery life, shouldn’t disappoint like Galileo. The brighter side is that Intel has partnered with several brand names in wearables – eyewear makers Luxotticaand Oakley; watch maker Fossil; designer wear company OpeningCeremony; acquired intelligent fitness device maker BASIS. In the fall of last year, Intel and OpeningCeremony unveiled MICA Bracelet; MICA is an abbreviation for My Intelligent Common Accessory.

It appears that Intel is head-on to win the game in wireless business through wearable market. That’s a great move! It prompts me to frame a phrase here – A leader should stop chasing, rather it should change the route.

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