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How One Hong Kong Entrepreneur is Disrupting Battery Tech

Posted by Samuel Phineas Upham

A new Hong Kong based hardware company called “Digi-Care” is attempting to disrupt battery technology. Using a sleek piece of hardware called the ERI, CEO Jimmy Liao hopes to bring fitness into the modern age. His wearable wrist watch will record walking distances, heart rate, temperatures and more. Liao claims you only need to charge the device twice.

How ERI Works

The consumer-grade fitness tracker substitutes the usual GPS technology that powers smart phone apps in favor of satellite-based navigation. The wristband uses a magnetometer to field user data from the Earth’s magnetic field. The band features a built in compass that tracks the user’s direction, then that data is run through an algorithm and stored on the user’s smart phone.

Disrupting Battery Life

According to CEO Jimmy Liao, ERI will deliver longer battery life through clever hardware installations. Instead of relying on GPS, which attempts to retrieve satellite data through an antenna, the ERI will use a lightweight body. The battery is painstakingly cut to fit each part of the watch band, as opposed to being housed in the watch face. An NFC chip will enable easy communication between iOS, Android and Mac OS platforms, with the promise of Windows 8.1 to come.

ERI seems comfortable as a part of the wearable tech space, letting other platforms do the heavy lifting while providing a sleek solution to a simple problem.