Chinese tech startup Huami Technology today held its Next Beat 2021 conference at Hefei, China. The conference is themed “The Future of Health” and indeed, the company announced several new products tailored towards promoting the health of users of its products.
Two of the products released include a new generation of smart wearable chips dubbed Huangshan 2S and a new self-developed operating system named Zepp OS. The new operating system focuses on health.
The Huangshan 2S chip is said to be the industry’s first dual-core RISC-V wearable chip. It also features an independent GPU. The processor comes with artificial intelligence and can achieve super-computing power and ultra-low power consumption. The chip can perform high-load calculations such as graphics and UI operations. Among them, the large-core system also integrates FPU and supports floating-point operations.
The processor takes over from the Huangshan 2 chip which was released around this time last year. Compared to the previous-gen model, the Huangshan 2S has an improved computing performance by 18%, while operating power consumption has been reduced by 56%. The sleep power consumption has also been reduced by 93%. Huami claims the processor can process sensor data for 24 hours and realize continuous monitoring of biological data in all weathers.
The Huangshan 2S chip integrates a 2.5D GPU which improves the graphics acceleration performance of the new chip by up to 67% compared to the previous generation. The GPU can independently and efficiently process graphics-related instructions, making the operating system run more smoothly. In addition, the convolutional neural network acceleration processing unit on the chip can quickly identify the type of disease; taking atrial fibrillation as an example, its recognition speed is 26 times faster than pure software calculations.
Huami also unveiled a new Zepp OS to provide an alternative to the Android Wear OS and others. The self-developed OS is entirely developed for smartwatches. Huami’s co-founder and the rotating president of the Global Innovation Center, Fan Meihui stated that the new OS comes with three main features – lightness, smoothness, and practicality.
Talking of lightness, the new operating system is based on the FreeRTOS microkernel open source code, which occupies a very small space compared to other general OS. The system package is only 55MB, which is about 1/28 of Apple’s watch OS and 1/10 of the Amazfit OS used by Huami Technology. From low-profile single-chip microcomputers to high-performance SoCs, the system is perfectly compatible and suitable for all types of wearable products.
Based on the lightweight underlying code and various power optimization methods, Zepp OS has further improved the battery life to ensure 24 hours continuous health data monitoring. The operating power consumption of Zepp OS is reduced by 65% compared to the previous Amazfit OS. Compared with the Amazfit Watch 2 running Amazfit OS, the battery life of the watch equipped with Zepp OS has increased by 190%.
Another major feature of Zepp OS is smoothness. The frame rate of most interfaces in the system can exceed 60fps, and the effect is smooth and delicate. In addition, the system also integrates 150 dials, including 15 cool dynamic dials.
Zepp OS also has powerful IoT connectivity and network functions. It can realize smart home control, NFC access control for cardless payment, etc. The OS also makes it easy to connect other heath equipment such as blood pressure monitors, blood glucose monitors, etc. In the future, through cooperation with GoPro, Huami smartwatch users will be able to control GoPro sports cameras to take pictures right from the watch.
At the same time, the system also supports various Internet cloud service applications, such as NetEase Cloud Music, Alexa, and Yuepaoquan.
In addition, Zepp OS supports 4G/5G connections and Wi-Fi connections. It also integrates a complete set of TCP/IP network protocols. This means that smartwatches equipped with eSIM can be directly connected to the cloud without a mobile phone, which is convenient for users.
For developers, Zepp OS is also equipped with a friendly and easy-to-use watch JS applet framework-Zeus Mini-Program Framework, which is convenient for developers to develop watch applets with a lower threshold. In the future, the same easy-to-use graphical development environment will be opened for dial design, and even individual users can easily design personalized dials.