The Great Interface Migration: Why Your Jacket Is the New Smartphone

Your phone has been hogging the spotlight for years. Now your jacket wants a speaking role, preferably mic’d up and artificial intelligence-assisted.

Wearables have become a serious product category because they live where behavior happens: on your body. That makes them ideal for passive health signals, payments, authentication, and increasingly ambient AI that can capture context in real time. The market is already massive. According to IDC, 136.5 million wearable devices shipped in the second quarter of 2025, up 9.6% year over year.

Now, it looks like Apple is getting more into the game.

The tech giant is developing an AI-powered wearable pin (cameras, microphones, a speaker and wireless charging), potentially arriving as early as 2027, The Information reported. Apple is simultaneously pushing Siri toward a more chatbot-like future. It’s not a shipping product yet, but it’s a signal that the next interface war may be fought on lapels, not home screens.

The news made us here at the Weekender question: What else is out there, and do people really want to wear something that has no concept of personal space?

What’s Out There

Believe it or not, the biggest wearable is the one you forget is wearable: earbuds.

Basic earwear accounted for 84.9 million units, or over 60% of Q2 2025 wearable shipments, according to IDC, because audio is the lowest-friction way to make tech feel like air. Smartwatches were the other pillar, accounting for 38.3 million units in Q2 2025, with Apple, Huawei, Samsung and Xiaomi among the top vendors.

The growth story is in the weirder edges. According to separate IDC research, worldwide shipments of augmented reality and virtual reality headsets combined with smart glasses without displays were expected to grow 39.2% in 2025, with volumes reaching 14.3 million units.

Smart rings are also climbing, as one industry report valued the global smart ring market at about $706.5 million in 2024 and projected rapid growth through 2032.

That means wearables are moving from counting you (steps, heart rate) to chronicling you (voice, habits, context). That’s where the hidden-info and too-much-info tension shows up.

Here’s a sampling of the wearables that are out there, in no particular order:

Humane AI Pin (the cautionary lapel tale): Humane’s pin tried to replace the phone and projected an interface onto your hand. Then Humane shut it down and sold assets to HP. Most core services stopped working in February.

Bee (the $50 conversation sponge): Amazon agreed to the acquisition of Bee, a wristband/pin that listens to conversations and turns them into transcripts, summaries and to-do lists. Bee said it processes conversations in real time without storing audio, although “no audio stored” still leaves plenty of “everything remembered.”

Friend (a necklace that texts you feelings): Friend is a pendant-style AI companion that communicates through a phone app. WIRED’s review described it as alienating, like wearing a tiny roommate who’s always listening and occasionally judgmental.

Limitless (formerly Rewind), the memory lanyard: Limitless built a pendant that records and transcribes real-world conversations. Meta acquired it in December and said it would keep supporting existing users while stopping new device sales.

Plaud NotePin S (wearable stenography): A clip/pin/necklace recorder that transcribes and summarizes, the NotePin S adds a physical button, so you’re less likely to accidentally log your brunch as a meeting highlight.

Sandbar’s Stream Ring (whisper-to-notes): A smart ring designed to record voice notes discreetly, even by whispering in a crowd, then transcribe them in an app, with U.S. shipping expected in summer 2026.

Woojer’s haptic vest (wearable bass): Woojer’s haptic wearables translate sound into physical vibration so you can feel music, games and movies. Finally, a wearable whose entire purpose is more vibes, not more metrics.

Retro Wearables

There are retro wearables, they’re thriving because they don’t try to become your life coach. Pebble is in revival mode with pared-down ePaper watches like the Pebble Round 2, leaning into battery life and simplicity over omniscience.

Meanwhile, Casio turned its calculator watch into a “Back to the Future” anniversary collectible that still does time, date, alarms and calculations without asking for your microphone permissions.

Here’s the new wearable bargain: The smaller the screen, the bigger the data. Some of these gadgets reveal hidden information (a UI on your palm; a whisper captured in a ring). Others reveal too much information, mostly about our willingness to outsource memory, attention and basic social grace to whatever is closest to our skin.

If Apple’s pin ever arrives, the winning feature won’t be the cameras or the chatbot. It’ll be restraint—and an off switch you can find without asking your necklace.

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