Swatch has announced that it has partnered with Visa to enable contactless payments in the US, Switzerland and Brazil using the Swiss watchmaker’s upcoming Bellamy timepiece when it launches early next year.
The company showed off the NFC-equipped Bellamy wristwatch in China back in October , with a sticker price of 580 yuan (US$91). It’s also set to roll out in China in the coming months.
Swatch says that ‘pay-by-the-wrist’ transactions require absolutely no energy from the watch itself, so the Bellamy will offer the same battery life as the company’s other products.
That sounds like an exciting proposition for watch wearers. Of the current crop of smartwatches, Android Wear-based devices don’t support NFC-based payment functionality. The Apple Watch and Samsung’s Tizen OS-based Gear S2 are exceptions; however, they all suffer from poor battery life.
It’ll be interesting to see if Swatch and other watchmakers begin integrating NFC-based payment functionality into more traditional watches ahead of wearable manufacturers.
➤ Swatch partners with Visa for pay-by-the-wrist contactless payments [Swatch Group]
Pebble brings its affordable smartwatches to India at last, starting at Rs. 6,000
If you’ve been holding off on buying a Pebble smartwatch in India because of the hassle and cost of shipping from the US, you’ll be glad to know that you can now get one locally, along with on-ground support.
The company has made its range of wearables available on Amazon India. At the lower end is the Classic , equipped with a monochrome display and priced at Rs. 5,999 ($90).
If you prefer a color screen, you can opt for the Time at Rs. 9,999 ($150). Shell out a bit more and you can choose from more elegant metal options like the Time Round at Rs. 13,599 ($205) or the Time Steel at Rs. 15,999 ($240).
Pebble believes that, in order to win over consumers in India and beat out the competition, it’ll have to offer locally relevant apps and watch faces. To that end, it plans to launch a series of hackathons so developers can contribute to the company’s growing platform that already offers more than 13,000 apps.
The launch comes just a couple of days after Pebble updated its Time series watches with improved health tracking features, such as the ability to display an overview of your achievements and see activity trends over time in the companion mobile apps, auto-track runs and long walks, and a smart alarm that goes off only during your lightest sleep.
In addition, the new firmware also lets iOS users respond to incoming phone calls with a canned text reply or a voice message; both features were previously available only on Android.
It’ll be interesting to see if Pebble can shake things up in the Indian wearables market, where it will compete with the likes of Motorola, Samsung, and Asus.
IDC predicts that wearable shipments are set to hit 110 million units worldwide, up by close to 40 percent from last year – but it also expects Pebble to gradually lose out on market share as platforms like WatchOS and Android Wear gain ground over the next five years.
‘Alexa, find me a nearby Chinese restaurant’: Amazon Echo now gives you local business info
If you’re not the sort of person creeped out by voice control permeating our everyday lives , then you’ll be pleased to hear that Amazon’s Echo assistant is now integrated with Yelp recommendations.
For a device that offers no visual interface but wants to help you out with the tasks in your life, it felt like a bit of an oversight that Yelp’s massive pool of business data wasn’t included up until this point but Echo owners in the US can now tap into ‘Local Search’ results for any nearby businesses.
As well as allowing you to find out what the options are around you, if you open up the Alexa app on your phone or tablet, you can also view details like the star rating and phone number for your chosen business.
Amazon says that it’ll be adding more local search features in “the coming weeks,” and that you’ll need to add an address in the settings section of your Alexa app.