WHAT’S A MICRO-HEARABLE? IN SHORT, THE FUTURE.

Computing used to require a room full of machines. Later, a desktop. More recently, smart-phones put powerful computing into the palm of your hand, & smart-watches wrapped it around our wrists. But the next revolution will be computers we place into our heads; capturing our every utterance and whim, connecting us to the cloud, answering to our beckoned calls. And of course, serving as a pipeline tapped directly into our noggins so that our personal data may be pumped straight over to the highest bidder.

 
 

Hearables are computers for our ears. Many resemble bluetooth earphones on steroids. Others are becoming more powerful, and enjoy more purposefully designed form-factors. Some are designed to help us sleep better, or diagnose and monitor medical conditions. Some will be equipped with powerful cameras and utilized by the military and police departments. In any event, ear computers are rapidly evolving to become a very big deal; highly specialized, and an increasingly indispensable/inseparable part of our lives–just as smart-phones became in the mid aughts. 

 
 
 
 

PRESENT TO STATE-OF-THE-ART

Apple AirPods, Google Pixelbuds, and Samsung IconX are early examples of simplistic hearables. Such devices, however, barely scratch the surface of what's actually possible with in-ear micro-computing. Moreover, they all suffer key limitations that are hampering mass-adoption, chiefly:

  • Large size (they stick outside of the wearer's ears, are are easy to dislodge, often uncomfortable, generally unsightly)

  • Limited battery life (typically only three to five hours use)

  • Poor sound quality (even if they lasted longer, you wouldn't want to keep listening) 

  • Limited functionality (a computer in your ear should do much more than just play music or enable basic telephony)

More advanced hearables are cropping up as well. German company Bragi, for example, produces a comparatively advanced hearable that can not only handle music and telephony, but can monitor your pulse rate. It includes accelerometers and other sensors that assist it in capturing biometric data and enabling a more advanced user interface. Still, overall size, battery life, sound quality, and functionality remain constrained by the limits of traditional engineering and production solutions. 

 
 

WE ARE BECOMING BIONIC.

In the 1970’s, a popular SCI-FI tv show called “The Six Million Dollar Man” featured actor Lee Majors as the character “Steve Austin”, the world’s first “Bionic Man”. Austin’s bionic eyesight and bionic left arm, and a pair of bionic legs imbued him with superhuman strength and capabilities. EAR Micro’s Tiny Hearables weren’t a part of the script 40 years ago — but they certainly could have been. Our micro-hearables hold the potential to make each of us a little bit “bionic”. Next stop? Implantable hearables!