Sony’s Reon Pocket is a smartphone-controlled wearable air conditioner


With summer temperatures ramping up across the northern hemisphere, temperature-controlled clothes really can’t come soon enough.
In the meantime, we’re left having to contort our jaws in a desperate effort to blow air onto our faces, or flap our shirts manically in the absurd belief that it’s actually going to make any difference.
But fear not. Sony is apparently on the case. It’s been working on the Reon Pocket air conditioner, a device that it says can be worn discreetly on your back to keep you cool in hot weather, and warm in winter.
Smaller than a smartphone, the miniature air conditioner slots into an inside pocket in a specially made undershirt and cools the wearer using a Peltier element usually used in cars and wine coolers. Its battery can last for 90 minutes, and needs two hours to fully recharge.
The Reon Pocket connects to a smartphone app, which the wearer uses to control the temperature as they go about their day. Or at least, 90 minutes of it.
While it won’t keep your face cool in direct sunlight, keeping the rest of your body cool under your top could make a real difference for those sensitive to hot and sticky weather conditions. Similarly, it’ll also come in handy when you have to head outside on bitterly cold winter days.
The Reon Pocket is the latest product to emerge from First Flight, a crowdfunding platform launched by Sony in 2015. First Flight lets workers at the tech company suggest slightly more offbeat products — like the Reon Pocket — before putting the most interesting ones on its funding site to gauge interest among potential customers.
It’s certainly looking good for the Reon Pocket as in just a few days it has so far raised more than $275,000 from around 1,800 backers.
Sony is aiming to launch the Reon Pocket in 2020, hopefully in time for the Tokyo Olympics, which, if past Japanese summers are anything to go by, is set to be a very sweaty one for visitors and athletes alike. Indeed, you may need to place several of these devices around your body to have any hope of coping with the oppressive heat and humidity.
The Reon Pocket comes with an undershirt and is expected to sell for around $130. It’s currently listed as a Japan-only product, but if it proves a hit, Sony could be tempted to expand sales of the device to overseas markets, too.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Linktree’s free workaround lets you add multiple links to your Instagram bio

Image
Instagram only gives you one opportunity to link to outside resources inside its photo sharing platform. This might not be a problem for a majority of the users, but for those wanting a little more customization and even more options, it leaves much to be desired. Enter  Linktree , a free tool for Instagram designed to improve traffic to your outside link, be it a blog, portfolio, or store. How it works is fairly straightforward. After connecting Linktree to your Instagram profile, you’ll receive a single link to place in your Instagram bio. Once that link in place, you can customize what it’s linked to within your browser, be it a single website, or a collection of sites you’re looking to direct followers to Say you’re a photographer who’s using Instagram as a marketing tool for your wedding photography. Using Linktree, you can direct Instagram followers to your blog, your portfolio site, and even your other social media accounts. Until now, you would’ve been stuck c...
Read more

EVERYTHING WE KNOW ABOUT THE PIXEL 4, THE MOST-LEAKED PHONE EVER

Image
Google’s  Pixel 3 might have been the  most-leaked phone in history . Long before its unveiling, we knew practically everything about it from unboxing videos, photo comparisons, even a full review of the device. Surely, for the Pixel 4, Google would clamp down on leaks to leave some surprises for its debut on  October 15th , right? Let’s just say, if that was the plan, it didn’t exactly work out. We’ve now seen the Pixel 4 XL from every angle and in three different colors. At least seven different sources have touched this phone, many of them confirming the same specs. We not only know which cameras it’ll have, but also what they may be capable of, including air gestures (go figure). That doesn’t even count information Google has already shared  on purpose. So if you want to know almost everything about the Pixel 4 nearly a month before it’s announced, buckle up. We’ve sifted through all of the rumors and information we can find to compile everything we know —...
Read more

Stable Android 10 starts hitting the Galaxy Note10 and Note10+ (Update: Canada)

Image
UPDATE  1 : 2019/12/16 4:35AM PST Previous rollouts UPDATE  2 : 2020/01/06 2:15AM PST Canada Two weeks after the  Galaxy S10 line received its stable One UI 2.0 build , it’s time for the Galaxy Note10 and Note10+ to get the latest Android flavor. According to a report by  SamMobile , the two late-2019 Samsung flagships are receiving the Android 10 update in Germany, although the rollout is limited to a small group of beta testers. This stable release follows a  five-round beta testing  that concluded just a couple of days ago. Samsung is rolling out the stable build only to its beta testers in Germany to possibly look out for any major bug. Besides SamMobile, the confirmation also comes from  some Redditors  who got the update in Germany just a few hours back. The same Reddit users also mention that Google Pay remains broken even after installing this final Android 10 firmware, although it wasn’t immediately clear how widespread t...
Read more