Besides a slew of notebooks announced earlier today, Acer also took the opportunity to release its latest generation of its Liquid Leap wearable. These new products offer an insight into the company’s approach in the emerging wearables industry, with an emphasis on style, activity tracking and battery conservation.
The new Liquid Leap wearables are offered in three distinct models, each serving its own target audience. The Liquid Fit is targeted at a younger market, for those who prefer a stylish wearable. The Liquid Active is a more fitness-oriented wearable, offering activity tracking and music controls. Finally, the Liquid Curve is the premium wearable from Acer this time around, offering leather bands to pair with the premium 1-inch curved display; in fact, the battery and even circuit board are curved.
Each of the Leap models announced today sport a 1-inch touch display, with the Liquid Curve featuring a curved display. To preserve battery, however, the displays are all in monochrome. The heart rate sensor is also present on all models, but there’s also an interesting new addition: gold-plated sensors (called galvanic skin sensor) which was developed in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) combine the data collected from the heart rate sensor and the galvanic skin sensor (which measures the amount of sweat produced) to produce what Acer calls a “stress index”, from which you can check if you are stressed at any given moment.
Battery life is a serious concern for Acer, which believes that a wearable should not be charged every day. As such, it has taken steps to ensure the new Liquid Leap wearables offer anywhere between three to five days battery life. As previously mentioned, the screen is set to display only black and white to conserve energy, while the galvanic skin sensor measures your stress levels 150 times a day instead of doing so constantly.
All Liquid Leap models also sync with Acer’s Leap Manager app, available on both Android and iOS
The final gambit is a very interesting one: all Liquid Leap – including previous-gen models – are compatible with the three major mobile operating systems: Android, iOS and soon, Windows 10. That means users will not have to be tied down to any ecosystem, allowing full use of each Leap wearable regardless of what phone you pair it to.
Unfortunately, Acer did not mention pricing and availability of each of these wearables, though ST Liew, the Malaysian-born President of Acer’s Smartphone Business, has indicated that Acer may be bundling these wearables together with its smartphones coming to Malaysia via telco bundles. TechnoBuffalo also reports that the Leap Curve is set to be priced below $100 (about RM360) – which is very competitive.
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