Ever since its inception last year, Samsung’s C-Lab has been cranking out projects and products that address the market and common problems in quite innovative ways, some bordering on outright strange. Projects have run the gamut from a mysterious triangle-shaped wearable that seems to be intended to create smart helmets to a belt that can tell you when you’ve had too much to eat or been inactive for too long. Taking a page from Alphabet’s book, these projects and their teams break off from Samsung at large to create a smattering of smaller, more agile startup companies that can have a bit more freedom and autonomy than they could as company projects. While this arrangement may have experiments and room for failure written all over it, it has already produced a number of products that are nearly ready for primetime. Five of those made a showing at this year’s IFA.
The five products on show from C-Lab are all meant for common consumers, and solve one pain point or another of interacting with technology in our everyday lives. A smart strap for smartwatches called Sgnl is aimed at those who make and receive a lot of phone calls, and allows users to use their finger as an earpiece. The smart belt that can tell you if you’ve eaten too much and give you fitness tips through a companion app, WELT, also made an appearance. Entrim4D, a realistic VR solution that uses headphones to trick your inner ear-based senses of motion and balance, showed up, as did Prinker, a project that allows users to print temporary, waterproof tattoos onto their skin that can last up to two days. Rounding out C-Lab’s IFA showing was MOPIC, an overlay of sorts that allows users to see 3D imagery on their smartphones without glasses or having to use a specially made phone.
For now, none of the C-Lab projects have a concrete release date except for Sgnl and WELT, which are listed on Kickstarter to be funded in October, with estimated shipping dates for backers in February and January of 2017, respectively. It’s likely safe to assume that the other projects on show at IFA, and future C-Lab projects, will get their own Kickstarter pages a bit closer to their release dates.
