Sony Core review

Sony has decided to get in on wearable tech with Core, its life-tracking sensor. Although similar in concept to some of the wearable fitness activity trackers, such as the recently announced LG Lifeband, Sony’s product is a little different.

Rather than being designed to purely monitor activity, Core helps you log and track your entire day, giving you an automated journal of what you got up to. It’s also not strictly wearable technology, as the product ships as a single USB flash drive-sized device that you can put in a pocket.

However, Sony is working on a set of peripherals that will house the Core, turning it into a wearable device. We have only seen the SmartBand, although we’ve been promised that more information will be released at this year’s MWC show.

For the SmartBand, there’s a wide range of colours available, with the Core clipping neatly into the rubber band. It looks smart and comfortable to wear.

The Core has no read-out on it, so everything has to be managed through the brand-new Android app (there’s nothing for iOS users), Lifelog. Once you’ve connected your phone to your Core via Bluetooth, Lifelog starts collecting data from the device. Sony says that Core will last for five days between charges, with a Micro USB port used to charge the integral battery.

Over the course of the day it can tell you how many steps you took, how many calories you burned, plus how much time you spent walking, running, cycling, driving, sitting and sleeping. In this way, Core is an activity tracker, to the point where you can even set activity goals and check how close you are to achieving them. As Core is waterproof, it can be worn all-day everyday, tracking absolutely everything that you get up to.

As well as monitoring you physically, Lifelog will record which songs you listened to and the photos you took. You can even add a Life Bookmark, letting you tag an event or location, so you can remember it later. In the demo we saw a restaurant being tagged as a great place to eat. At the end of the day and slick animation takes you through what you did, so you can get a feel for how active you were.

Core is also tied in to your smartphone phone as both a control and an extension of what your phone can do. So, if you get a call on your phone, your Core will start to vibrate, making you aware of it. With no display, you’ll still need to get your phone out to see who’s calling, though. Sony also showed how you can use Core to control media playback, using its buttons. In this way, Core is kind of like a smart watch, too.

Pricing and availability haven’t been announced yet, and we’ll need to wait until MWC to get this information, plus what else it’s capable of doing.