Motorola’s Moto Hint

When the notion of a personal assistant first came to fruition, it started as a personal robot in your home. Years later when your PC could talk, it was a voice assistant that lived inside. Now, that has evolved into what we know as Siri, a personal assistant that lives inside your most important and personal device, knows your friends, where you’ve been, can answer some of your burninig questions, and can even make you laugh every once in a while.

There are clear limitations with something like Siri because it’s only inside your phone, meaning you have to be using your phone in order for it to be useful. Being with you everywhere you go is the factor that could turn this into the initial dream of the personal assistant.

How do you get an assistant to come with you everywhere you ask? Let me explain. I stumbled upon one of the Motorola announcements earlier this year where they talked about a small bluetooth device they call Moto Hint. It seemed very appealing and I thought I’d try it out.

I knew I didn’t want to walk around with a bluetooth headset always in my ear because, well, that guy…

I also knew that I didn’t want to go through untangling my headphones or wearing overly sized beats headsets and be tethered every time I want to listen to my music on the go. In comes the Hint. Unlike the bluetooth headsets you know of today, it is a discreet headset that could fit into your ear without sticking out too much.

Here’s where the magic starts. Those tiny bluetooth devices are most certainly our future with technology. A personal assistant that lives in your ear and is always giving you the information you need without having to look at any screen. Imagine waking up and wearing this bluetooth accessory and going to brush your teeth while it briefs you on today’s most important news that you care about. After the briefing, it starts listing your notifications you missed overnight, telling you who’s birthday it is today, reading out your calendar, and then playing your favourite song. That is all happening while you go on with your normal day, uninterrupted by screen time.

Once you leave your place, it start playing your morning commute podcast playlist, and asking you if you want to make this important phone call you scheduled the day before. Since it has a built in microphone, you take the call without taking out your phone, then it snaps right back to what you were listening to. As soon as you get an incoming notification, it reads it out for you and could take a voice reply if it happens to be a text.

The potential for this is limitless. For now, the Moto Hint acts like any other bluetooth headset would, until one day it could pack enough technology to allow an assistant to be in there, always on anywhere you go.

Welcome to the future of wearables.