Google has just announced that it’s buying wearable company Fitbit for $2.1 billion. In a blog post announcing the news, Google SVP of devices and services Rick Osterloh said that the Fitbit purchase is “an opportunity to invest even more in Wear OS as well as introduce Made by Google wearable devices into the market.”

September means a lot of things. The muggy New York summer is winding down. Watchmakers are coming back from their summer holidays. And it's new Apple Watch time. This is now the fifth year that I've made the annual pilgrimage out to Silicon Valley to be a part of the gaggle of reporters literally tripping over one another to be first to get their hands on Apple’s latest and greatest.

Remember how Google paid the Fossil Group $40 million for its secret smartwatch tech and R&D personnel? At the time Fossil and Google told Wareable that Google had acquired “new product innovation that’s not yet hit the market,” that would sit within the Wear OS family. Well, this may be our first look at that product. Pictured above are three hybrid wearables that go by the name “Fossil Collider DIANA Smartwatch,” currently available for preorder from a variety of retail sites for around €200 / $220.

For the past month, Fitbit remained silent while customer complaints mounted over a recent software update for its Charge 2 fitness tracker that ruined some devices. But on Tuesday, in the wake of a CBC News investigation, the San Francisco-based wearable technology company acknowledged there's a problem.

Google won federal approval to continue its project at higher power levels for better accuracy.

Chinese schools are now tracking the exact location of their students using chip-equipped “smart uniforms” in order to encourage better attendance rates, according to a report from state-run newspaper The Global Times (via The Telegraph). The implementation is just about as unsettling as “using smart technology to track students’ whereabouts” sounds.

Today, Google will begin rolling out a software update for Wear OS smartwatches. I’ve been using this new version for about a week, and although it’s nowhere near as advanced or as fast as what you’ll get on an Apple Watch, it’s a big improvement over what we had before.

Pebble’s online services will officially die at the end of this month, but some could live on through Rebble, an unofficial group of Pebble users who are trying to keep their watches alive.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has signed off on the first ever transition contact lenses, which will get darker when the wearer is out in sunlight. "This contact lens is the first of its kind to incorporate the same technology that is used in eyeglasses that automatically darken in the sun," the FDA's Malvina Eydelman said in a press release.

Smart glasses that won’t make you look like a Google Glasshole.

How GPS tracking and location sharing of employees, assets and vehicles saves companies money and improves services.

Apple Inc. is planning to release a version of its smartwatch later this year that can connect directly to cellular networks, a move designed to reduce the device’s reliance on the iPhone, people familiar with the matter said.

Blink and the lights go out. A sensor on a pair of glasses that can pick up the motion of your skin when you blink could be used to switch the lights on and off, or to help those with limited or no mobility write messages on a computer. “The good thing about the technology is the high sensitivity, which may become particularly useful in places where the motion is very limited,” says Ambarish Ghosh at the Indian Institute of Science, who wasn’t involved in the research.

Harnessing the power of the sun can solve this. After years of living the “worldwide hustle/entrepreneur/jet set gypsy life,” as he calls it, Adrian Solgaard is set on reinventing the mobile office and is seeking funding via Kickstarter.

The company has also emailed some customers to say it hasn't "forgotten" them.

Phone grabbing has turned into a much more concerning issue because of the deluge of costly cell phones, particularly in very populated urban areas like Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, and Peshawar. Be that as it may, unless there is some ad lib on the snatchers' end, we could soon be free from this problem, on account of "Self-destructing phones".

Ever wondered how many calories you’re burning in the bedroom? The i.Con condom, which keeps track of your sex stats, could be the answer. You mean they are organic latex and scented with bergamot? Worse. In fact, the first smart condom isn’t even a condom. It’s a ring that fits around the base of a penis, holding the condom in place. Why not use a clothes peg, or a rubber band? Intensely painful, I’d imagine. Besides, this is no ordinary penis ring.

Smartwatches know you’re getting a cold days before you feel ill.

The use of facial recognition software for commercial purposes is becoming more common, but, as Amazon scans faces in its physical shop and Facebook searches photos of users to add tags to, those concerned about their privacy are fighting back. Berlin-based artist and technologist Adam Harvey aims to overwhelm and confuse these systems by presenting them with thousands of false hits so they can’t tell which faces are real.

It looks consolidation is acoming to the wearables space with Fitbit set to acquire smartwatch maker and $20 million Kickstarter-darling Pebble, according to..