Levi’s Jacquard jacket warns if you forgot your phone
Levi's Jacquard jacket is a wearable that does more than keep you warm — it lets you gesture to bookmark locations as you walk by, pick up a call and now also acts like a tracking device, flashing and vibrating if your phone is too far away.
The feature, called Always Together, is part of a new update to the smart jacket, and spotted by Android Police. The ability recently went live, through an automatic software update. The Jacquard jacket already let owners signal their phones with a gesture of their choosing — which would make the smartphone start ringing loudly.
Now the jacket pushes that alert to you without asking, and your phone will show the status as well. Although a Google project, Jacquard does work with iPhones as well.
The Commuter X Jacquard is a denim jacket that hit shelves in 2017 for $350 — well beyond the standard price of a denim jacket you'd typically buy for yourself or own. A partnership between Google and Levi's, the wearable lets you manage your phone from its sleeve, tapping, swiping and vibrating depending on different requests and demands.
Wearers choose the notifications they want — such as tapping the to change a song playing on their smartphone. The requests are sent via sensors woven into the fabric. Levi's jacket first debuted at CES in 2017, but the company started dropping public hints of a smart jacket back in 2016.
The jacket also works with a number of different brands including Bose, Left and Uber. You can get a flashing light when a Lyft arrives, for example, through a raised tag at the cuff of the sleeve, which looks a bit like a security device stapled to clothes to prevent them from being stolen.
Current owners should have the new phone feature available now through a software update.