Amazon has created its fitness band. Halo will be a strange product

Amazon enters the market with a new gadget and a new service. The company of Jeff Bezos decided to take a piece of the cake of fitness bands - hence the Halo project . In fact, Halo is a fitness band and related app.

The first information indicates that the band proposed by Amazon will differ in many respects from the Xiaomi, Huaweia or Samsung bands available on the market. Halo's most prominent feature is the lack of a display. The band looks more like ... a piece of a belt with an electronic element attached to the inside of the belt.

According to the intention of its creators, when designing the wristband, less emphasis was placed on monitoring sports activity and more on changing lifestyle. For this reason, in addition to the basic possibilities of tracking cardio exercises, sleep, the amount of body fat or the tone of the voice, Halo will offer the possibility of using applications designed by Amazon partners. These will be specific challenges that will aim to change the lifestyle of the band user, reminding him to meditate or analyzing his sleep.

Hello band

The Halo band itself consists of a sensor module and a band that covers it from the top. As a result, it looks more like a piece of jewelry than a watch. If we want to use it, check the data stored by it, we will have to look at the application.

We won't find much in the band itself. It does not have its own GPS or Wi-Fi module (communication with the phone is via Bluetooth). There is an accelerometer, a temperature sensor, two microphones, an LED diode and a button to turn the microphones on and off. If you've been deluding yourself, stop it: the microphones aren't used to talk to Alexa, they're just there to detect the tone of your voice.

Amazon believes users should wear the wristband around the clock, so a fully charged battery should last for a full week of use. The device is water resistant up to 5 ATM, which is, as Amazon puts it, "swimming resistant".

Body and Tone - two of the most original features of Halo

Body is a function in which, using the smartphone camera, the user creates a three-dimensional scan of his body (you need to take four photos of your whole body, one on the front, back and two sides). After the scan is sent to the Amazon server, the algorithms determine the body fat content of the user. Amazon promises that after the analysis results are sent back, the data is deleted from the company's servers. According to information provided to the press, a three-dimensional body scan and the measurements of the percentage of body fat based on it are a more reliable indicator of health than weight or BMI.

Halo, in turn, uses two microphones installed in the band to listen to and analyze the tone of the voice. Based on this data, the band collects information about the user's emotional state during the day.

When you first start the feature, the Halo app will ask you to read a piece of text into the microphone so that it can learn the user's voice. After this one time, the microphones will occasionally turn on and off during the day, listening to the user's voice and judging it for your speech rate, rhythm, positivity or energy. It is worth emphasizing here that the entire system will operate independently of the user. The application will not be able to be made to listen on command. However, if someone has concerns related to eavesdropping with microphones, they can be turned off with the only button on the housing. Nevertheless, Amazon ensures that sounds recorded with microphones are never transmitted to any servers and that no employees are listening to them. Anyway, so far this option will be useless for us, because the application has been trained on the American English language, therefore, at least at the beginning, its indications for foreigners will be much less valuable.

Sensitive data - Amazon likes this

Amazon emphasizes that all data collected using the band and the application is only stored locally and the company does not intend to store it anywhere. For this reason, the Halo band will not connect with other fitness applications available on the market, but only with the dedicated Tone application.

Track your sports activity

However, it can be assumed that most users will spend most of their time watching the number of steps taken. The Halo app will actually count your cardio activity, but it will do so weekly, not daily, so it will allow you to implement recovery days without spoiling ... of course, your activity ring.

Still, it is definitely not an app for lovers of tracking their activity and sports progress. While the band will be able to record a walk or run, you will have to manually enter any other activity in the application.

In short…

As a user of Apple Watch or Xiaomi Mi Banda, I have no idea who Halo is aimed at. On the one hand, it is a much less invasive device than them, not distracting, remaining in the background and silently monitoring any activity in the application (available in the subscription).

The idea of ​​passively listening to the user with microphones in order to assess his emotional state does not fully convince me either. I even have the impression that my emotional state would slightly but worsen, if only because I was aware that I was constantly eavesdropped on by the armband.

We will only find out about how it looks in practice in some time. So far, the Halo band, which is in Early Access, cannot be purchased from Amazon.

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Amazon has created its fitness band. Halo will be a strange product