Polyera has revealed the details of its new flexible wrist-worn device, which is looking to take the wearable space by storm in the near future. Meet the Wove Band.
The device is currently in pre-alpha stage and bears a passing resemblance to a smartwatch, but Phil Inagaki, Polyera's CEO, prefers to call the creation a "digital canvas."
The flexible electronics company unveiled the software and hardware details of the Wove Band, as well as details of a program which is meant for developers, artists and designers so that they can soon start working with the device's prototypes.
The Wove Band has a multi-touch display which is not only flexible, but also six times the size of a conventional smartwatch. This surface is useful for viewing anything one desires, be it apps, graphics or even coding experiments.
The band physically resembles the slap-on bracelets which were popular in the 1980s and could be wrapped around the wrist. The Wove Band can also be laid flat on a table so that one can view its always-on display.
Touted as the first flexible display product in the world, the Wove Band is based on Polyera's Digital Fabric technology. This technique substitutes the silicon which is currently deployed to create TFTs with a unique material that is flexible. This process makes the creation of robust, e-ink, film-based flexible displays possible.
The Wove Band's 30mm x 156mm display has a resolution of 1040 x 200 pixels and is able to wrap itself around a bracelet that is segmented. The bigger end segments house the Freescale i.MX7 dual-core processor clocked at 1GHz, 4GB storage, 512MB RAM and the 230 mAh battery. Even the charging port is located in the large segment, as is the clasp mechanism which helps lock the wearable.
The device will run on Wove OS, which is a modified Android version. The demo from Polyera gave a peek into the device's UI, as well as some of the apps that the Wove Band would pack in such as recipe, navigation and media apps. It will also offer support for Bluetooth 4.0 and has a 9-axis motion sensor.
The prototypes of the Wove Band are estimated to make their way to developers by December this year. Polyera is targeting a mid-2016 commercial release for the device.
Impressive as the device sounds, whether the Wove Band will make a mark for itself in the hotly-contested wearable market and catch-on among consumers remains to be seen.
