Battle of the smart belts: Belty Good Vibes, Samsung Welt

Samsung is entering the smart belt market, but is a wearable that makes you feel guilty for weight gain a step too far?

Samsung’s Welt: a healthcare belt that helps people manage their waist size by measuring their daily habits and behaviours.

It’s looming as the battle of the smart belts. Last year, the quirky French start-up Emiota showcased a belt that looked like a prop from a Star Trek movie. Now Samsung is getting into the act.

Known as Belty, the Paris-conceived wacky wearable was the darling of the small tech items revealed at CES Unveiled, a showcase of the world’ most innovative start-up technology. Reported by many of the world’s technology journalists, it was showered with free publicity worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Belty promised to expand and contract with your waistline. That might occur as you sit down or stand up, but equally after gorging or starving yourself. Coupled with activity monitoring sensors, and an ability to communicate with you by vibrating your waistline, Belty looked a winner and even notched up a show award for its offbeat nature.

But in production terms, Belty proved a fizzer with sales still at pre-order phase. However it’s back at CES as Belty Good Vibes and the company tells us that sales are imminent.

But Belty now has pending competition with Samsung Electronics showcasing a smart belt called Welt developed at the company’s Creativity Lab (C-Lab), a place where employees are given the chance to dabble in their pet projects.

Samsung says Welt can record the user’s waist size, eating habits, steps taken, as well as time spent sitting down. It sends this data to an app for analysis, and the production of a range of personalised healthcare and weight management plans.

Other C-Lab projects on show at CES are a hand-motion controller for mobile virtual reality devices, that lets users control objects in a virtual world, and a band that lets users hear sounds transmitted through their body.

Like Belty, Welt is only in development. Time will tell if it has any market potential: one wonders if a smart belt that makes you feel guilty for putting on weight is one wearable too many for consumers.

This year’s CES Unveiled is scheduled for tomorrow in Las Vegas.

Chris Griffith is attending CES in Las Vegas courtesy of Sony and Acer