Sony wants to record where you’re going — and what you do on the way

This year’s edition of International CES is rapidly shaping up to be the one where everyone had some sort of wearable to show off.

Sony may be spending a lot of time talking 4K at the show, but it didn’t want to be left out of the wearable game, either–even if we will have to wait until February for more details.

On stage to talk up smartphones including the newly unveiled Xperia Z1S, Kunimasa Suzuki, the president and CEO of Sony Mobile Communications, veered into the world of wearables. Called the Core, it’s a tiny monitor that records your movements. “This could be the tinniest gadget Sony has ever made,” Suzuki said. “But it’s at the heart of our vision.”

That vision includes putting the Core in a SmartBand product Sony plans to make available in the spring. Worn around your wrist, the SmartBand will monitor not just the steps you take but the routes you take, the way you travel, and the activities you perform along the way.

“It’s not just about motion, but emotion,” Suzuki said.

All that data sinks up with a Lifelog app on your smartphone; the app serves as a kind of virtual log of your daily activities that you can play back and use for recommendations on altering your daily routine.

The Lifelog app demoed here at CES is pretty colorful and features an animated display of someone walking, with colorful bubbles popping up to record activities. The concept sounds a lot like Moves, an iOS app from ProtoGeo that records your movements and keeps a diary of where you’ve been during the day. I’m a fan of Moves–I recently included it among the apps I’d recommend to new iPhone users–so I’m interested to see what Sony is going to do to distinguish Lifelog.

I’ll have to wait a little bit longer. Core, SmartBand, and Lifelog were only making a brief appearance at CES. Sony expects to release more details at Mobile World Congress in February.