#CES2016 – Current Daily

Digital snippets: all the wearable tech news from #CES

Trawling the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center during CES is the equivalent of perusing 38 football fields of shoulder-to-shoulder booths featuring endless displays of new technology.

The great news about the internet: you don’t have to actually do that hard work yourself. So here’s a round-up of all the fashion-related and wearable technology news that came out of the week, as written by other people all over the web (I too gave it a miss this year!)…

How Under Armour plans to turn your clothes into gadgets [Wired]
Under Armour’s Gemini 2 sneakers are fitness trackers for your feet (as pictured) [Mashable]
Misfit’s wearables hide their tech behind cool minimalism [Wired]
Fitbit Blaze launches as $200 Apple Watch competitor [TechRepublic]
Samsung unveils ‘Smart Suit’ as part of family of wearables [Mashable]
Samsung made a smart belt that doesn’t suck [The Verge]
Fossil to roll out 100 wearables [WWD]
OMbra biometric smart sports bra woos women [BrandChannel]
L’Oréal patch measures UV exposure [TrendWalk]
Fashion icon Iris Apfel debuts luxury smart bracelets that track health [MedicalDaily]
Mira’s new smart jewellery combines tech and high fashion [DigitalTrends]
Futuristic sneakers tighten automatically, warm your feet and are controlled by an app [MailOnline]
Casio maps out smartwatch territory in cyclists and hikers [FT]
SCOTTeVEST’s new jacket lets users cleverly store a laptop inside their clothing [iDigitalTimes]
Clothes at the CES fashion show actually looked pretty normal [CNET]
A look at some of the wackiest wearables on show [Wareable]

Image via Mashable

CES 2016: L’Oréal patch measures UV exposure

Now for some serious innovation in sun protection… At CES, L’Oréal has unveiled a smart skin patch developed by its incubator team that can tell the wearer how much exposure he/she has had to harmful UV.

Called My UV Patch, it’s thinner than a plaster, lasts around five days and can be worn just about anywhere on the body that’s likely to get exposed to the sun.

It launches in 16 countries this summer and – even more interesting – will be free.

The patch’s photosensitive blue dye charges colour on UV exposure. That gives you some idea of your UV exposure but for a more accurate view, the wearer takes a photo, uploads it to an app and, hey presto, a full assessment of the UV exposure the skin has had.

The company told the BBC that existing wearables come as jewellery or wrist bands but are limited because they have to be worn on one part of the body. But L’Oréal is a specialist in products that can be worn more widely so this development makes sense.

And it’s not an instant product that changes colour on UV exposure then does nothing else. The fact that it can be worn for days allows users to get a broader view of what’s happening to their skin.

That said, having to take pictures and going into an app could be something of a block for many people. As consumers, we all want things to be easy and while the committed skin protector might be ok with the method, the people who are less likely to apply sun protection when they need to might be put off.

But, for now, it’s an interesting development and one that should be applauded for its laudable aims as well as for its future potential – patches such as this can be used in the future to measure a wide variety of other health and skincare-related issues too.

This post first appeared on Trendwalk.net, a style-meets-business blog by journalist, trends specialist and business analyst, Sandra Halliday