Smartwatches just got smarter thanks to Google's Project Soli

Over the course of the year, the company challenged themselves to run the technology on a smartwatch and that's exactly what was showcased this year around. The device's earlier kit used too much power and needed a desktop or laptop to run it. However, this year's redesigned chip reduces power consumption 22 times over and also has a footprint that is 3x smaller.

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It is also 256 times more efficient. What this means in layman terms is that, thanks to the new chip, you can control your fancy new smartwatch without having to touch it!

Here's Project Soli from last year:

Here's The Verge getting some hands-on time with this year's Project Soli:

Even better, we won't have to wait too much longer with the new kit shipping to developers, sometime during the first half of 2017.

During one of the demos, the ATAP team showed how one can scroll up and down messages by just bringing your hand closer and further away from the watch. One of the benefits of this is more screen real estate. No longer will the screen have to account for your finger covering half the screen. This is important because smartwatches have extremely tiny screens, so every inch matters.

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The team noted, almost as a throwaway, that this isn't only meant for smartwatches. They've been working with audio giants JBL to build this technology into speakers too.

"On a really simple level, it means you get to use your entire screen for what screens are meant for: showing you stuff," Ivan Poupyrev, a member of the ATAP team, told Verge. "You're pretty much wasting precious screen real estate which could be used for something useful,"

Project Soli will mainly be implemented in Android Wear devices and now there is one more option for controlling the devices. You don't have to go with voice gestures (the device doesn't recognise them all). You don't even have to use your fingers, which as mentioned above, gets in the way of the screen. You can now just use it with hand gestures.

Project Soli may not be ready for public consumption yet, but with developers getting interested in it, and with what was shown at this years IO, the future sure does look bright. If you weren't considering a smartwatch before, an we're sure you had your reasons, with Project Soli inside, there are now far fewer reasons not to.

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