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Will.i.am has been showing off his smart-band/smartwatch, named Puls, at conventions and live talk-shows for the past month, revealing a few of the upcoming... Will.i.am Unveils Puls, Smart-Band Running Forked Version of Android

Will.i.am has been showing off his smart-band/smartwatch, named Puls, at conventions and live talk-shows for the past month, revealing a few of the upcoming features on the new device – developed in partnership with UK firm 7digital.

People keep saying this is a smartwatch, but the design of Puls references a smart-band more than anything else, with a circular design similar to a bangle. Will.i.am calls it a “cuff” and explains it is part of his “fashionology” concept – bringing fashion and technology together – in order to make products that look good and work.

Puls

Puls will be able to run without the need for a smartphone, has 3G connectivity built in (no 4G LTE) and will allow cellular calls and text messages to be sent. This would mean Puls needs a SIM card and data plan of some description, in order to function.

The smart-band also supports email, social networking (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram) and navigation (Google Maps, we expect). The inbuilt keyboard will use an interface similar to Fleksy, known for its smart predictive and autocorrect features.

AneedA is another new feature on Puls, a voice assistant, using tech from Nuance. This will allow voice dictation on messages and emails. Nuance is the team reportedly behind Siri, Apple’s own voice recognition service.
Internally Puls will run on a Snapdragon SoC and 1GB of RAM, with 16GB of internal storage. This is quite a lot for a smart-band, Android Wear watches run on less than 1GB of RAM and have around 4GB of internal storage.
Will.i.am has been promoting Puls for a good few months. The original release date for the smart-band was in July, but pushed back due to being “a way too ambitious project”, according Will.i.am.
We are not sure how many units will be available to order, but in the UK O2 and in the US AT&T will handle the sales. Will.i.am disclosed no price at the Dreamforce 2014 event, where he announced Puls.