{"id":659331,"date":"2013-05-21T11:00:15","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T15:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=820291"},"modified":"2013-05-21T11:00:15","modified_gmt":"2013-05-21T15:00:15","slug":"meet-agent-a-smartwatch-with-a-second-processor-for-minimizing-power-consumption-and-wireless-charging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/659331","title":{"rendered":"Meet Agent, A Smartwatch With A Second Processor For Minimizing Power Consumption And Wireless Charging"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"70\" src=\"http:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/05\/d077ee7030305ec8e20d8b32fc3d221c_large.jpg?w=100&amp;h=70&amp;crop=1\" class=\"attachment-tc-carousel-river-thumb wp-post-image\" alt=\"d077ee7030305ec8e20d8b32fc3d221c_large\" style=\"float: left; margin: 0 10px 7px 0;\" \/><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/secretlabs\/agent-the-worlds-smartest-watch\/widget\/video.html\" height=\"480\" width=\"640\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Smartwatches are all the rage, and judging by the turnout and level of enthusiasm at the recent year one meetup for Pebble Kickstarter backers in San Francisco, there&#8217;s at least a passionate niche audience for the things. So it isn&#8217;t surprising to see them continue to pop up on Kickstarter. A <a  href=\"http:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/secretlabs\/agent-the-worlds-smartest-watch\/comments\">new one called Agent<\/a> has a few unique tricks, however, which its creators believe set it above the competition.<\/p>\n<p><a  href=\"http:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/05\/a0eecaf98667f663f94fbdd79ac3de60_large.gif\"><\/a>What the Agent has that others don&#8217;t is a combination of power management features and wireless charging. It has not one but two processors, for instance, one with higher performance capabilities and one extremely low-power variant to handle simple background tasks. There&#8217;s a new Sharp Memory Display that combines the advantages of both a traditional LCD and e-ink black and white, which is very power conscious, as well as wireless Qi induction charging with an included pad. Since it&#8217;s based on the widely-accepted Qi standard, however, it should work with charging pads from a variety of manufacturers.<\/p>\n<p><a  href=\"http:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/05\/d077ee7030305ec8e20d8b32fc3d221c_large.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Agent is a refreshing change from other Kickstarter smartwatches in that it actually offers something new in terms of technical aspirations. The watch should get up to 7 days of battery life with its smart functions activated, or up to 30 days of standby in &#8216;watchface-only&#8221; mode. Even if that misses the mark by a bit, it should still beat the stated and actual battery life of existing devices like the Pebble. The gadget also features a 120HMz ARM Cortex-M4 processor, a 1.28-inch display, Bluetooth 4.0 (aka &#8220;Low Energy&#8221;), onboard motion and light sensors and an OS that allows developers to write apps for it using C# and Microsoft Visual Studio. It uses a Microsoft .NET runtime environment that Agent&#8217;s creators say will maximize memory and power efficiency, unlike with other smartwatches. The team says you&#8217;ll be able to start writing and emulating apps on the desktop as soon as the funding campaign is complete, which would be faster than the staged rollout of the Pebble SDK.<\/p>\n<p><a  href=\"http:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/05\/430026103a3814d7528af4f9c9901d35_large.jpg\"><\/a>The creators of the Agent are Secret Labs, a team of engineers that has been building open-source products under the brand name Netduino since 2010, as well as smart home technologies, and House of Horology, a custom timepiece manufacturer that brings some real watch cred to the game. Early bird pledges get a pre-order for $129, where the final price is expected to come in at around $249 when the product ships late this year.<\/p>\n<p>  <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/gocomments\/tctechcrunch2011.wordpress.com\/820291\/\"><\/a> <\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?a=pkXtxvCozCk:UnmJLUV7U1M:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?i=pkXtxvCozCk:UnmJLUV7U1M:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?a=pkXtxvCozCk:UnmJLUV7U1M:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?i=pkXtxvCozCk:UnmJLUV7U1M:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?a=pkXtxvCozCk:UnmJLUV7U1M:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/crunchgear?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Smartwatches are all the rage, and judging by the turnout and level of enthusiasm at the recent year one meetup for Pebble Kickstarter backers in San Francisco, there&#8217;s at least a passionate niche audience for the things. So it isn&#8217;t surprising to see them continue to pop up on Kickstarter. A new one called Agent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6449,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-659331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mobile","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6449"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}