Fitness is the new fad among mobe-makers: first Samsung started to measure your heart rate through its smartwatches and now LG has announced headphones which do the same thing. The heartphones plug into a special module which interfaces to the LG Lifeband Touch or to a phone. The Lifeband Touch can then be Bluetoothed to a …

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Wednesday 14th May 2014 09:00 GMT JDX

Nice idea

Although shame you can't plug straight into 3.5mm somehow.

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1. Wednesday 14th May 2014 10:07 GMT petur
  
  Re: Nice idea
  
  Or that they aren't completely bluetooth, like my plantronics backbeat.... dangling cables are so last century...
  
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  1. Wednesday 14th May 2014 10:50 GMT wowfood
    
    Re: Nice idea
    
    I kept getting annoyed with headphone cables in the gym, in the end I bought one of those Sony NWZ-W273 waterproof mp3 players.
    
    Enough space for my tracks, no wires, reasonable charge, and I can take it swimming with me if I so choose. Although I do get some weird looks from people when I wear it around town.
    
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    1. Wednesday 14th May 2014 15:33 GMT VinceH
      
      Re: Nice idea
      
      " Although I do get some weird looks from people when I wear it around town."
      
      Is that because of the mp3 player, or the fact you've forgotten to change out of your trunks?
      
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      1. Thursday 15th May 2014 12:43 GMT wowfood
        
        Re: Nice idea
        
        Naw, my legs are sexy.
        
        It's just because you have these two blocks sticking out from your ears where the mp3 parts are. Makes you look a bit like you have cyborg ears.
        
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Wednesday 14th May 2014 09:28 GMT Neil Barnes

You have to assume they've done the audience research

But does anyone actually *want* this technology?

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1. Wednesday 14th May 2014 10:08 GMT Version 1.0
  
  Re: You have to assume they've done the audience research
  
  Who knows if they "want" it - the real question is, "Will they buy it"?
  
  Actually heart rate is fairly easy to measure remotely - you can do it through furniture, the floor or whatever if you are careful.
  
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2. Wednesday 14th May 2014 10:11 GMT Steve Davies 3
  
  Re: You have to assume they've done the audience research
  
  does anyone want it?
  
  That is not the point...
  
  They have to be on the market before Apple. To the marketeers who work for Samsung etc, nothing more matters. Then they'll be able to broadcast those already made adverts proclaiming that 'We were First!'.
  
  Small things like this matter to Marketeers. to the rest of us, it is more like 'Meh?'
  
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3. Wednesday 14th May 2014 10:23 GMT JDX
  
  Re: You have to assume they've done the audience research
  
  Lots of people like to measure their heartrate while in the gym or exercising - apps that plot your run/cycle route and give you a graph of speed, bpm at every point.
  
  So probably a useful thing to have.
  
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  1. Wednesday 14th May 2014 10:53 GMT wowfood
    
    Re: You have to assume they've done the audience research
    
    I can see it being an entertaining thing for some fitness apps etc. Adjusting the tempo of ambient tracks to match your heart rate etc, or maybe adjusting the track so at resting heart rate you have a basic ambient audio, as the heart rate increases this changes adding different tracks etc.
    
    *shrugs*
    
    *Patents ways of adjusting audio tracks with relation to ones heart rate*
    
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4. Wednesday 14th May 2014 13:32 GMT admiraljkb
  
  Re: You have to assume they've done the audience research
  
  Well, I've had a wireless HR monitor for exercise since 1989. The prospect of getting VO2 data simultaneously to correlate where my HR is? Oh hell yeah, I'm in. This will generate a lot of interest from athletes, but I doubt it will generate little if any interest from the general population.
  
  Now the question is are folks will to pay for it? On the cycling side which I'm more familiar with- seems to me that $500+ for a good cyclometer, another $500 plus for a power meter, $2000+ for the bike, and then this will likely be chump change in comparison. Not sure how many runners would get it, but probably a bunch of them would be interested too.
  
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Wednesday 14th May 2014 11:25 GMT Anonymous Coward

The trouble with all these fitness wearables is that people who might be interested usually have specialised sports watches (polar, garmin) that do the fitness aspects a lot better.

I seriously doubt those earphones are getting my Hr anywhere near as accurately than my polar did or my garmin does.

I think they're offering a non-compelling product to a market segment that's well catered for.

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Wednesday 14th May 2014 13:43 GMT Anonymous Coward

In the ear is not a bad idea

It can be made invisible if you want (wireless) and the ear is a good place to get an accurate pulse. Its also not a bad place to assess your body temperature either, which is not a bad idea to track during hot weather training if you're concerned about heatstroke.

With a quality MEMS accelerometer (i.e. more accurate than that any smartphone has today, but may be cost effective tomorrow) it could even calculate your instantaneous speed during the entire run, which is not possible with GPS. Since most people swing their arms while running, it would have to be a lot more accurate to do this than on your head which (hopefully) only moves up and down while running, not forward and back.

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