Oral-B Unveils The World’s First Electric Smart Toothbrush
Who doesn’t want pearly white teeth? From brushing twice a day to flossing after every meal, we do everything to get those pearly whites. After the introduction of electric toothbrushes, some people moved over to these as they believe that it is more efficient and effective than regular toothbrushes.
Now, Oral-B has gone a step further by introducing a new toothbrush at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2016 called the ‘Oral-B Genius’. This brush uses “Position Detection Technology” with sensors in the brush and video recognition tech that uses the camera on your smartphone. Together the smartphone camera and sensor keep an eye on areas of your teeth being brushed to help ensure no space is missed.
The users need to place their smartphone in a robust-looking holder on the mirror in front of them. Then they need to fire up the dedicated Oral-B app 4.1, position their face in front of their smartphone’s front-facing camera and begin to brush. Motion sensors inside the brush detect the areas being brushed. Users receive instant feedback on the brushing of each zone of the mouth via the Oral-B app, including guidance on pressure applied and brushing duration. The toothbrush itself has Oral-B oscillating-rotating-pulsating tech to help clean teeth better.
Other key features of the electric toothbrush are triple pressure sensor technology, which protects gums from overaggressive brushing by indicating when too much pressure is applied and then automatically slows down the brush head speed.
“Patients are not brushing their teeth correctly, even though they think they are; they brush too hard, do not brush long enough, and miss zones of the mouth. This new brushing system helps us coach patients to brush properly, and improve these three main areas of patient brushing behaviors that affect their oral health,” said Dr. Jose Nart, DDS, of Nart Clinica Dental, Barcelona.
As the user brushes they can watch the screen in front of them to essentially play the game of brushing their teeth. A little circle with segments represents their mouth, directing the user to brush for the correct amount of time in each area of their mouth by making the color of each segment fade as they go. Oral-B says this is based on the insight that up to 80% of people spend an insufficient amount of time brushing at least one zone inside their mouth.
“The Oral-B GENIUS and App take digital guidance to the next level by bringing awareness to what’s actually happening each time users brush and giving them real-time guidance to improve every brushing session. Now our patients can continue what’s started in the dental office at home – a professionally guided brushing routine.”
Users can actively monitor their brushing via the official iOS and Android Oral-B apps, which provide visual aids to encourage users to spend time on each individual zone in their mouth, without applying too much pressure or missing the back molars. Before moving to the next segment, the users first need to brush away the blue color in each of the segments.
In order to save their data to the app and check their progress, users need to sync their phone with the app around every two weeks. The data can also be shared with their dentist. Since the launch of the app two years ago, Oral-B only receives aggregated data about the 6.4 million brushing sessions tracked by the app.
The toothbrush comes with a bunch of accessories such as a stylish smart travel case that charges the brush and a smartphone, a smartphone holder to position your handset on the mirror while brushing, and a lithium-ion battery for least two weeks of use between charges, a multicolored 360 degree lighting system featuring 12 different colored lights allowing users to customize their brushes using the Oral-B app.
While there is no word on the pricing of the toothbrush, it is expected to be available in select markets starting in July. Also, an Android and iOS version of Oral-B app 4.1 will be available in Google Play Store and iTunes around the same time.
