News

Facebook Is Working On A Smartwatch With Messaging & Health-Tracking Capabilities

Published

5 years ago

February 16, 2021

As part of its ongoing quest to dominate our lives, Facebook is working on a smartwatch with messaging and health-tracking capabilities, informed The Information on Friday.

The smartwatch will reportedly run on the Android operating system, but it’s unclear whether if Facebook decides to use the established Wear OS platform or release the smartwatch with its own flavor of Android.

In any case, Facebook’s smartwatch will focus heavily on messaging and health-tracking, presumably featuring lightweight versions of the social network’s family of services, including not only Facebook but also Instagram and WhatsApp.

Because the smartwatch will have a built-in eSIM card, it won’t have to be tethered to a smartphone to access the internet, a feature that’s guaranteed to appeal to all fitness users, especially if it delivers integrations with products from companies like Peloton.

The release of the Facebook smartwatch won’t be the company’s first push into other market segments. For example, Facebook’s Oculus VR headsets are among the most popular products of their kind, boasting a thriving ecosystem that’s home to some of the most innovative virtual reality experiences currently available.

As such, the biggest obstacle standing in Facebook’s way to success likely won’t be its ability to create an attractive product but its poor reputation among consumers and regulators, neither of which might not be thrilled by the idea of the company having access to users’ health data 24×7.

Also Read: Apple Likely To Release 8K VR Headset In 2022

Of course, Portal, a standalone video chat device released by Facebook that sparked similar privacy concerns, is still selling well, so it seems that many consumers are still willing to sacrifice their privacy if it means getting their hands on an attractive product.

While the first generation of the Facebook smartwatch will probably play it safe, future generations could benefit from Facebook’s acquisition of the neural interface startup CTRL-Labs in 2019, which specializes in building wireless input mechanisms.

News

At I/O 2026, Sundar Pichai Concedes AI Must Deliver Real Value

Gemini 3.5, a personal agent called Spark, agentic shopping, and Android XR eyewear are all aimed at making AI feel useful, not just impressive.

Published

2 weeks ago

May 20, 2026

Nour Nasir

at io 2026 sundar pichai concedes ai must deliver real value

Google

Google’s annual I/O developer conference (I/O 2026) has recently become a status update on the same question: can the company turn its AI spending into products people use every day? This year, chief executive Sundar Pichai described Google as being in a phase of hyper progress, while conceding this is the part of the cycle where people want to see real value in the products they use on a day-to-day basis.

The strategy on display was to push agents — AI systems that act on a user’s behalf — into nearly every Google product at once. Search now has an “intelligent search box” that returns generated explainer videos alongside links. Gmail, Docs, YouTube and Maps are gaining their own agent layers, including a Docs Live feature that turns spoken instructions into drafted text with citations.

Two new models, Gemini 3.5 and a cheaper Gemini 3.5 Flash, arrived the same day. Google says 900 million people now use Gemini, and that more than 50 billion images have been generated with it. The pricing tier names are likely to confuse buyers: a new AI Ultra plan launches at $100 a month, while the older Gemini AI Ultra drops from $250 to $200.

The flashier announcements were Gemini Omni, a video generator pitched as a more realistic answer to OpenAI’s discontinued Sora 2, and Gemini Spark, a personal agent that handles recurring tasks across a user’s Google account. A new universal shopping cart lets agents complete purchases across multiple retailers from inside Google itself, placing the company between the merchant and the buyer, and also owning the checkout.

Also Read: DJI Teases Dual-Camera Osmo Pocket 4P For 2026 Launch

Google also confirmed its Android XR eyewear, built with Samsung and frames from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Audio-only glasses ship this autumn; a display-equipped version, which would superimpose live translations into the wearer’s field of view, is still in development. Both sets translate, however only the display version shows you the result.

What Pichai did not resolve is the bargain underneath all this. An agent is only useful to the degree it knows your calendar, your inbox, your shopping history and your physical surroundings. Google has now confirmed that, in time, the same context may carry advertising.