5G is powering the future of wearables. When most of us think of wearables, we think of smartwatches or fitness trackers. These devices track our health, steps, fitness, and more, and send these data to our mobile phones wirelessly. The main advantage of wearables is that they provide us with freedom of movement.

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So, how can 5G benefit these wearable devices?

5G’s super-fast mobile broadband can provide speed of up to 20Gbps, which is several dozens of times faster than the current 4G network. 5G networks will allow wearable devices to communicate in less than one millisecond. To put that in perspective, a phone with 4G connectivity can load a web page in about 50 milliseconds.

With 5G implementation on the horizon, experts believe functionality, capacity, and nature of wearables to improve drastically. These devices will not only track our fitness, 5G will open up unprecedented opportunities. In industrial applications, wearables will have new features that were previously never even imagined.

5G will enable wearables to be sleeker and smaller compared to today’s versions.

“What 5G does is make it easy to transport data to the cloud, to make decisions faster,” says Sanyogita Shamsunder, Verizon’s vice president of 5G Labs and Innovation.

“In a few years, you’ll be a walking connected app. When trying to find a friend’s house, you’ll feel a vibration in your right shirt sleeve to indicate that you should turn. A personal digital assistant embedded in your contact lens will show you your appointments on a miniature screen in your eye. Your shoes will measure how far you walk—while they recharge your wearable devices,” writes Jennifer Alsever in Fortune.

While looking at the 5G impact on wearables, we should keep in mind the privacy issues that we have to deal with. Privacy advocates are already worried about the huge amount of personal data being collected from wearables.

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Hearables and smartglasses are becoming popular by the day. Next, smart clothes will be powered by 5G and then we might see 5G-enabled body implants.

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