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

Devices

Moved by Evie Ring

It looks like the wait for Evie Ring is finally over. It's coming to our fingers in 2024. It's 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, this has managed to convince a large part of the female market, who have 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 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 Masima.

In addition to the presentation of the device in question, we expect Apple to take a step forward in the field of tracking well-being. It's focused on the big health metrics, but we feel like it's lagging behind in the realm of wellness devices. Just looking at where Whoop, Oura, and now Garmin have taken things shows how much work Apple still has to do. 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 really would be about time we got an updated device. As a simple sensor vehicle, the hardware is relatively unimportant.

However, we would like heart rate sensor upgrades and battery life increases.

Oura Ring Gen 4

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

During this time, the manufacturer did not stand 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 challenged by models such as the Evie Ring, Circular Ring Slim and Ultrahuman Ring Air.

With many improvements, competitors are only getting closer to the Oura's level of comfort and design.

Samsung Galaxy Ring

The smart ring market is one of the most interesting subcategories of wearable technology. So far, however, none of the biggest tech players have 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

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, this one 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 generate.

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 the consumer consciousness, it should probably happen now.

Stories

Blood pressure

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

Samsung has an existing workaround 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 huge 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 feature 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 already offer readings of changes in oxygen levels during sleep. However, due to restrictions, since they are not officially a medical device, the devices cannot talk about sleep apnea.

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

This is another feature announced for the Apple Watch X, and we'd be surprised if sleep apnea wasn't a major topic of conversation at this year's Samsung, Pixel Watch, and even Huawei releases.

Blood sugar

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

There are a number of companies with promising solutions, such as Afon from the UK, 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.

So expect significant progress to be made in this area this year.

Artificial intelligence and wearables

2023 was a breakthrough year for artificial intelligence, and everything seems to be changing this year. But we can expect a shift from fairly useless concepts to useful and useful implementations. It is precisely the wearable device industry that 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 are heavily dependent on regulation. Despite everything, we expect the first concrete steps this year, most likely on the wings of Apple's Quartz platform.

Patent War 2.0

It seems like we're back in the patent wars 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, say the companies Ultrahuman and Circular.