It is 5pm, and Lin Bin is checking the bright-blue band on his wrist for an update. The report is disappointing. He has taken only a rather sedentary 2,379 steps – a fraction of the ambitious daily recommendation of 8,000 that comes preloaded on his Mi-Band. This combination alarm, sleep monitor and pedometer is the latest product from the company Mr Lin co-founded, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi.
It shows that he woke at 7:33am, following 2:19 hours of REM-stage sleep and 3:44 of non-REM sleep. “That was a good night,” he says, unconvincingly. He does a quick scan of his second office in another building to see if anyone is in it, using the webcam linked to his Mi4 smartphone that flashes a dazzlingly clear video of an empty chair and a lamp. Nothing much exciting is going on. He swipes the recording back three hours to see if anyone has trespassed into his private sanctum. Nope. Three hours of blazingly vivid 1,080-pixel, high-definition chair and lamp.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about the items he is using is the price: $13 for the Mi-Band and $23 for the camera – prices low enough to put this technology within the reach of millions of members of the newly emergent Chinese middle class.