News & Reviews:   wearable

Xiaomi recently posted a few teaser images on their Mijia Weibo account recently, showcasing what seems to be the upcoming Mi Watch which looks very similar to the Apple Watch. While the majority of the details of the aforementioned device remain a mystery, the image did hint that the smartwatch comes equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100.

A new patent application by Samsung Display published today in South Korea shows a possible 3-in-1 device that transforms from a watch into a phone, and even a tablet. This transformation is made possible the new technology based on stretchable OLED display.

According to anti-Virus company Bit defender, the data transferred between an Android wearable and a smartphone is not secure. Wearables like smartwatches use a Bluetooth connection to send and receive information from the paired smartphones. While this connection is secure to some extent, it can easily be intercepted by hackers who would like to take a peek at the user's conversations. Bluetooth is usually considered secure because it can be accessed only from a short distance, about 10 meters or less. This restricts hackers from attacking a live connection from a long distance. Bluetooth also has its own six digit encryption system to keep hackers at bay. However, Bit defender reports that this six digit passcode is easily crackable by a computer program since there are only 1 million possible combinations. Once this encryption is cracked, hackers can get hold of all the information communicated from the smartwatch to the paired smartphone. Bit defender has also demonstrated a proof of concept video which is shown below. In the video, the company successfully brute-forced the six digit encryption between the Android based LG G Watch and the Nexus 4 smartphone running the developer preview version of Android L.