Basis Peak

» see mybasis.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the last words ~

basis peak was the kind of thing american tech reviewers used and turkish tech buyers only read about. it launched november 2014 at two hundred dollars and was sold only through us channels for most of its life, with a titanium version later at three hundred. i was thirty by then, using a cheap chinese step-counter that ran on a coin cell battery. the peak was a proper wearable computer for people who wanted a running-focused watch that was not garmin or fitbit.

the actual technology was a real step forward. continuous optical heart rate through a green led on the underside of the watch, sleep-stage tracking that was more granular than anyone else was shipping at the time. intel had bought the underlying company (basis science) in march 2014 for around one hundred million dollars, and this was the first product they shipped under their own wearables ambition.

the problem was that same green led. under certain conditions the sensor and the housing around it would overheat and cause burns or blisters. only about 0.2 percent of shipped units reported injuries, but 0.2 percent of a wearable that touches skin for eight hours a night is not a rounding error you can absorb.

~ the record ~

~ the actual end ~

on 3 august 2016 intel issued a full voluntary recall covering every peak watch manufactured between august 2014 and july 2015 (which was almost all of them). the refund was full retail: two hundred and thirty four dollars for the standard peak, three hundred and forty four for the titanium.

senior vp josh walden told press that a software fix had been attempted and abandoned: "we aren't able to develop such a solution without completely compromising the user experience." the correct read is that lowering the led duty cycle enough to be safe also broke the continuous heart rate feature that was the entire selling point.

the sync and cloud service was kept alive for four more months to give recalled users time to pull their data. on 31 december 2016 the mybasis.com backend was switched off. no service meant no sync, and a device that could still tell time but nothing else.

~ the next chapter ~

intel's whole wearables group unraveled through 2017. mobihealthnews reported large layoffs in the division that summer, and the pending next-generation basis device (already in progress at the time of the recall) was shelved. intel would eventually exit consumer wearables entirely and focus on the data-center silicon that was making them actual money.

the peak's technical DNA did not disappear. optical heart-rate sensors on the underside of a watch became universal within two years, first on apple watch and then across the rest of the industry. the basis peak was arguably the first mainstream device to try continuous optical heart-rate as a core feature. it just could not survive being the first.

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