The challenges of developing a smartwatch – Part 3
Houston, we’ve had a problem!
By Stephen Fellner, Lune Smartwatch Inventor & Founder
In today’s world we rely on electronic gadgets for so many things, life would be hard to imagine without them. It is the job of the engineers to make sure they do what we expect them to do. Developing these gadgets always have their challenges, and this is especially true for emerging technologies like Smartwatches. We are marching into unknown territory, doing things we have not done before, solving problems others have not solved before, such as the battery life problem for Smartwatches. Because we have a battery that is a fraction of the size of a Smartphone, and we need to run hundreds of times longer with it than a Smartphone, we have to look for every possible place where even the most miniscule amount of power could be saved.
I imagine that the experience is similar to how NASA engineers were trying to bring home a crippled spacecraft during the Apollo 13 mission. With the astronauts cramped in a tiny capsule and having lost most of their power due to an explosion, engineers had to figure out how to make all the critical systems work with far less power than they were originally designed to work with to keep them alive and get them home. There was no way of getting more power. They just had to work harder with the little power they had left.
That mindset is the key to designing a good smartwatch. You can’t complain about the constrained space and limited battery – you can’t get more. You also can’t sacrifice functionality. So you work through it one problem at a time. Every week brings a new and unique challenge, and when you find the solution? That’s a truly amazing feeling.
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