“According to Chinese gadget news site Tech.163, Apple may be in the process of developing its own smart watch that connects to your Apple devices via Bluetooth. Based on the report, Intel will be working with Apple to create the smart watch, with a 1.5-inch PMOLED display made by RiTDisplays with ITO-coated glass.” It must be the holiday lull. I’m this close to putting this in the joke category.
It has to be a joke. Either that or Apple has lost their minds. It would be a nearly useless gadget with a hefty price. What market is there for such a device? No serious watch collector or buyer will want such a device. It’s not the Apple logo or digital technology that drives watches. Especially not one made in China. Your average teen crowd wouldn’t want one. They don’t want to wear a watch, regardless of what it does. And 1.5″ screen? It is going to be clunky at best. Especially when it comes to women’s watches.
ITO-coated glass? Lame. Sapphire is where it’s at. Even touch sapphire.
Edited 2012-12-27 16:48 UTC
It’s neither, it’s an Apple-related rumour so completely made up.
Stories like these are a tail of Chinese whispers and pub gossip. In fact this is probably nothing more than the next edition of the iPod nano that has been so warped out of context that it bares no resemblance to the actual truth.
I believe an Inspector Gadget-style watch that keeps time and you abreast of news, commuter times, etc. with a built-in camera for facetime, is not out of the Picture… I’d rather keep texting, emails (viewing), heck, even Nagios alerts on a watch(provided there;s an API) , than a phone or tablet, anyday. As this would be bluetooth enabled, a watch alert would definitely be better than constant cellphone ringtones in a business meeting or restaurant.
I have wanted that idea for a while. Imagine being able to see messages and reject calls from the watch.
But it needs to be an open standard, since one watch design is just not going to be enough. Only the Apple market segment are unimaginative and uncreative enough to ever accept only one look.
Still hope they will make it open though, or an open “copycat” version will follow behind soon. I have been asking for this for 10 years ever since my first mobile with texting.
You haven’t been paying attention
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Ericsson_LiveView – check out links in the article; released 2 years ago, quite decent price.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_SmartWatch – or the current model. Both work “with most Android phones”.
PS. But how this SE watch went unnoticed, how Sony one goes unnoticed, perhaps tells us something… perhaps smartwatches aren’t that good idea, in practice?
Edited 2012-12-27 20:49 UTC
Maybe the technology should have gone the other way. Watch manufacturer to improve sales adds programmable backlight to most high end watches. And the Phone manufactorer could then find ways to integrate that. Because I would not buy a Sony or Apple digital watch, but a good Seiko that is augmented by bluethooth integration to my phone would be awesome.
I think you’re in the minority there.
Most people wear watches as a functional fashion accessory or because they can’t use a phone at work.
In the case of the former, bluetooth isn’t really pretty / fashionable enough to wear on ones wrist; and in the case of the latter, bluetooth would be useless.
So I think it will be a long time yet before such things ever take off – assuming they ever will.
Apparently men didn’t wear wristwatches, but used pocket watches (I guess mobile phones compare to those now). Wristwatches were for women. This changed during the war, don’t know which one, I guess the first world war.
I don’t know about England, but here in The Netherlands most people still wear watches. Personally I have a number, each for certain occasions. Most of the time I wear a Casio F-91W:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_F91W
It’s the cheapest watch I have, but I wear it because it’s small, light and complete. In other words: you don’t feel it, it doesn’t get in the way and has an alarm, stopwatch, backlight.
When I wear an Apple shirt I have 3 Apple watches to choice from. If its a Formula One weekend I have a F-1 watch. On holiday I have a water proof (swimming pools and sea) watch with a button to switch between local and back-home time. For meetings I have 2 expensive watches, for musicals and stuff a classic looking watch and for weddings I have a few pocket watches. And a couple of others.
I didn’t know that. Interesting stuff (I’d rep you just for that if I could).
That’s a great deal more coordinated than I think I’d ever bother to be, but if you enjoy watches / have the income to afford such treats then good for you
I’m still hunting around for a replacement to a watch I broke 15 years ago and yet to find anything I like
Watches, like most fashion accessories, are very personal items. So finding even just one watch to match my personality has been a trick affair (though I’m glad to see you’ve had better luck there). Where as I think most people see phones more as gadgets, so are more motivated by function (and I guess a degree of form too) more than pure aesthetics and owning something individual to them.
Maybe I’m way off the mark here, but I’d imagine even someone like yourself who enjoys Apple products would feel a little strange about wearing a generic Apple wrist watch which (for arguments sake) 1 in 10 of the population could buy. Or are you not as bothered about having more individual items when it comes to watches?
I’m very picky when it comes to watches. Yes, I’d buy an Apple watch even of millions of others do, but I’d only wear it when I go running or the cinema (so I can peek why my phone was vibrating). Perhaps at work if it’s not too heavy.
When you go to Spain or Turkey you can find many watches, from cheap to expensive. From a distance most shops seem like watch heaven, but on close inspection I don’t like most watches.
The Casio one is a watch I was on the lookout for. It’s retro, but it also has some history to it (and even its own Wikipedia page). Items are more fun if they have a story behind them. Most watches don’t.
I really dislike watches with “fake” stuff on them, like dials that don’t do anything, a fake compass or these dive timer aids that can’t be rotated. What I also dislike are watches with all kinds of texts on the face, like its specs or watches that have overly artist ways of showing the time, making it more like an IQ test than just reading the time.
My watches need to be easy readable, void of any distractions, no fake functions and an established brand (the history bit). I can’t say all my watches fit that description, but then again most of them I rarely wear. I have 4 I use most.
Yeah, that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_F91W#Claimed_use_in_terrorism part is… curious
(better don’t take it on a flight to the US, I suppose ;p )
That’s a fun bit of trivia of course.
But I don’t doubt this watch would make a great timer for a bomb. It’s cheap, you can get it everywhere, its battery lasts a very long time and it has an alarm.
The downside is though that the alarm is daily, meaning you can’t use it to detonate a bomb outside a period of 24 hours. So once set you need to place it within 24 hours. Once set you can’t disarm it, unless you build in another device.
I guess if you’re in to electronics it wouldn’t be too difficult to make a timer device that gives you a much more flexible range.
Personally I’d go for remote controlled bombs, giving you the greatest control over the exact detonation time.
So, your Nokia 1100? ;P
1101!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_watch
Pocket watches are not common in modern times, having been superseded by wristwatches. Up until the start of the 20th century, though, the pocket watch was predominant and the wristwatch was considered feminine and unmanly. In men’s fashions, pocket watches began to be superseded by wristwatches around the time of World War I, when officers in the field began to appreciate that a watch worn on the wrist was more easily accessed than one kept in a pocket. A watch of transitional design, combining features of pocket watches and modern wristwatches, was called trench watch or “wristlet”. However, pocket watches continued to be widely used in railroading even as their popularity declined elsewhere.
The use of pocket watches in a professional environment came to an ultimate end in approximately 1943. The Royal Navy of the British military distributed to their sailors Waltham pocket watches, which were 9 jewel movements, with black dials, and numbers coated with radium for visibility in the dark, in anticipation of the eventual D-Day invasion. The same Walthams were ordered by the Canadian military as well. Hanhart was a brand which was used by the Germans, although the German U-Boat captains (and their allied counterparts) were more likely to use stopwatches for timing torpedo runs
Yeah, I’m familiar with pocket watches as one of my closest mates collects them.
Then you have a very cool mate.
The most amazing are these 19th century pocket watches. It’s a blend between art, technology, history and for that time (no pun intended) perhaps a touch of science fiction. It’s also a period where things were made to last, not to expire like stuff is now.
It’s hard, well impossible more likely, to image what a pocket watch did to someone living in a society that isn’t so time driven as ours is now. I guess people often asked you what time it was. Nobody does that anymore now.
In fact, it’s very hard not to know what time it is these days. But it was back then and if you had a pocket watch you did know.
I don’t know about that – I think there was lots of rubbish, too. We rarely remember it because… it didn’t survive to our times.
And with watches there’s also the issue of accuracy, not merely if it works or not.
I think MOS’s statement was a fair one. Things are made much cheaper these days, but then that’s the price we pay for wanting to pay less for goods. The upshot is that watches are now affordable where as once upon a time they weren’t to a great majority of people.
But OTOH just because something was expensive, doesn’t mean it had to be reliable and lasting. I have few old watches around, they are unreliable as timekeepers.
Now, inexpensive quartz watches are quite reliable and lasting. Watchmaker profession nearly disappeared, it’s not needed.
I guess you have a point there. Well, at least they didn’t on purpose made something crappy.
I don’t think we can be certain even of that – maybe some watchmakers did make, on purpose, future work for themselves?
I do wear this one :
http://www.conrad.fr/ce/fr/product/672266/Montre-solaire-radiopilot…
Solar + radio controlled : always on time. Far enough for my use.
Kochise
That’s a very nice looking watch!
Would be even better if they removed the 13-23 numbers, and the solar run/radio controlled text, because it’s not like you keep forgetting that and need to keep reminded each time you want to know what time it is.
Its just about self promotion. About aestetic, you can get these versions :
http://www.conrad.fr/ce/fr/product/672094/Montre-solaire-radiopilot… (“black” edition)
http://www.conrad.fr/ce/fr/product/672265/Montre-solaire-radiopilot… (cheaper and leather)
/off topic
Kochise
I had a Sony SmartWatch for a while; it’s an interesting device in theory but the execution is not quite there yet. I gave it to a friend who is more of a “watch man” than I am, he enjoys it well enough.
I can’t see Apple improving much over the Sony watch, as it already felt and looked like an Apple device.
Deep in the R&D labs of the like os Samsung, Microsoft, Apple, Google etc there are probably a bunch of people who look at things like the S-E device and try to take the ideas to the next step.
They evaluate the technology, try it out and then do some crystal ball gazing as to where that bit of tech might go PLUS how it might be integrated into the current and future product set that their company is selling/developing. The ‘How cool is that team’.
If they didn’t do this then that company is most certainly going to be left way behind the competition over 3-4 product cycles.
Therefore, IMHO this is not really news. What would be news would be release of information that company X was never going to use Tech Y in their products.
Seriously, all this rumour-mill nonsense is just the tech equivalent of fashion gossip rags.
Maybe we like to think it’s different and more important and advanced and whatnot but at the end of the day this is what it is: gossip without substance or importance.
I haven’t seen any “hi tech” watch model succeeding despite many of them were made. Well, even simple electronic watches are somewhat avoided or even ignored in a “real” watch reviews. Well, it’s an accessory and the main thing a watch must have is some kind of luxury factor, having real gears, ticking. unless Apple could market that to it’s followers as a cool thing.
OTOH Apple already released what is possibly the most popular (almost)smartwatch, the iPod Nano 6th gen (after adding to it a watch band). Though who knows how many were & are used that way.
And IIRC Apple marketed… watch bands, their varied styles, as the cool thing.
Check this :
http://www.clubic.com/mobilite-et-telephonie/article-509591-1-i-m-w…
http://www.imwatch.it/
Same player, play again…
Kochise
Another stuff :
http://www.gadgetselectroniques.com/Montre-smartphone-Android-cbDaf…
http://www.pearl.fr/telephonie-mobile/gsm-sans-forfait/mini-telepho…
Kochise
Edited 2012-12-28 20:05 UTC
Got more infos on the android watch :
http://fr.ubergizmo.com/2012/04/z1-smart-android-2-2/
Kochise
Why Intel?
In the 80’s I had a computer watch, although it didn’t connect to my phone. Well, it only connect to my Commodore 64 with a cable. Anyway, there is nothing new about “computer” watches.
The Apple watch rumor has survived a couple of times ever since people started wearing iPod Nano’s as watches. It sound ideal to be able to use your watch to see if you need to get the iPhone out of your pocket. It would be great if Nike+ on the iPhone displayed information on the phone, because it’s easier to peek at your watch while running than to grab a phone.
I have an above average person number of watches (including Apple watches), but I’ve stopped buying them the last 2 years in anticipation of an Apple watch or another brand that connect with an iPhone.
Just for completeness, there exists now a watch like that: the metawatch.
Of the current crop of smart watches (sony smartwatch, imwatch, metawatch and wimm), the metawatch has versions that connect with the iPhone, and shows notifications, SMSs et al in the watch. It also supports call notification.
In the android camp, I know that work has been done in the android support program to implement call notification/rejection, but don’t know if rejection is completely implemented.
For more information:
http://www.metawatch.org/
Be aware that the firmware is somewhat rough around the edges, especially for iPhone users (with android it has had a lot more testing, although it can be a little finicky with the phone firmware’s bluetooth stack; it works best with CyanogenMod).
Both the watch firmware and the phone support app are open source, with caveats (the watch firmware has a binary blob for the bluetooth stack).
Discaimer: I own a metawatch since September 2011.
I like the Metawatch’s display (nice retro and very clear and easy to read), but I’m not to fond of the strap, I prefer metal. Also the bezel is a bit large, rather they used it for a larger display. A very good thing is it being water resistant.
But if I buy a smart watch it needs to connect to Nike+. When I go running I carry my iPhone in an armband and it’s not easy to keep running while taking it out, looking at it and putting it back.
It would be great if you could use your watch to talk with your car, although Apple haters will claim prior art as they had it in the 80’s and even based a TV series on it.
I agree with you about the usage you could make with such a watch but want to answer your “Apple haters” comment.
First there is prior art for “smart watches” and not only in TV shows. If Apples implementation differs a bit it’s not a revolution… It’s simply a new implementation… Nothing more.
I think in this kind of situation Apple fanboys (And Apple itself) are worse as they will claim it’s Apples invention and that everybody else who makes a watch that works with electricity copied them (The proof is there… Look at the patent XXXX where Apple “invented” the usage of electricity to accomplish intelligent tasks in a device attached to a body)
As always… Sorry for my English… It’s really not my first language 🙂
Edited 2012-12-28 12:38 UTC
Your English is fine!
Actually it was a small joke and a reference to Knight Rider.
If Apple comes up with a watch and loads of people buy it they will probably claim to have re-invented the smart watch or kickstarted the industry. I don’t think they will claim to have actually come up with the idea, nor did they do that with the iPad and iPhone. They will patent stuff and might sue others.
Fact is that smart watches are already amongst us and have been for years, but they aren’t mainstream and Apple could make that happen like they did with tablets. That would probably be good for any smart watch maker as it will cause people to look for them and check them out. If Apple proves there is money to be made the innovation will take off.
But it’s tricky. if Apple makes an expensive watch I don’t think many people would buy one. Why pay a lot for an iPhone and then a lot for not having to take it out of your pocket? If Apple makes a cheap watch they will sell lots, but not make much money. Apple can probably make a lot of stuff that will sell, but it won’t earn them much money so they don’t.
Then again, they don’t make a lot on their accessories and an iWatch could be seen as one.
Until there is an Apple watch in the stores it’s all speculation anyway.
Hello MOS6510
I appreciate your answer.
I didn’t realize it was a joke and a reference to Knight Rider (My fault)
I don’t think smart watches will ever have any success. It’s not a question of Apple or anyone else making them.
The main problem with such a smartwatch is its size… To be usable it must have a big screen (Maybe not 4’’… but big enough). If it has a minimalistic screen it can be used for very limited tasks like:
– Answer/reject calls
– Bluetooth music player
– Hum… heuuuuu… Maybe pay stuff with a NFC chip
With a big screen, it’s simply that you (Generic you… Not you MOS6510 🙂 ) look stupid, except for specific tasks like jogging.
It’s not the kind of object people like to show or are proud of.
That makes it an expensive gadget for a niche market.
My jokes are often presented in a serious way and cause such reactions to my sadistic amusement. :-p
I don’t think the screens needs to be very big. It’s only used for time and notifications, perhaps some media controls. Voice control (Siri)?
But to succeed it needs to have some good specifications and not be made from cheap material, this will drive the price up, add to this profit margin and it may become an expensive watch. Add a little more money and you got yourself a (small) tablet.
So I do think an Apple watch can be useful, but I doubt it can be good AND affordable AND make Apple enough money for them to go ahead with it. I guess they would if millions of Android users would dance in the rain with their Android watches, but they aren’t so Apple might not do it.
Let’s imagine a funny device (No need to talk about who makes it for now) that I could also appreciate:
Ok… A watch… How should it be:
– no (too) visible difference with a “normal” watch.
– Voice recognition
– It MUST have 3-4-Whatever-G
– bluetooth connection with other device for:
— Phone answer/reject (Must work in conjunction with a headset)
— Read media from portable device (Music / Radio) (still has to work in conjunction with a headset).
— Biometric records and real-time advices for cardiovascular training (like a Polar Watch) (Another one commented about it and it’s a good idea)
— Stream media to other devices (TV / Radio / Computer)
– NFC for easy payments
– Cable-less charging
– Wifi (client and hotspot)
– Open protocols to communicate with a maximum of devices
– And a little personal touch… Why not a little steampunk touch 🙂
Edited 2012-12-28 13:37 UTC
That’s a very expensive watch!
– Voice recognition – Why not relay your voice to the phone? My Bluetooth car kit has the option to activate my phone’s voice recognition. The regular people I call are in the car’s memory, others I dial using the phone’s voice recognition,
– It MUST have 3-4-Whatever-G – What for? That would only make sense if it was a stand alone device. I’m looking for a watch that acts as an kind of remote for my phone.
– bluetooth connection with other device for:
— Phone answer/reject (Must work in conjunction with a headset) – Yes.
— Read media from portable device (Music / Radio) (still has to work in conjunction with a headset). If by read you mean play, yes!
— Biometric records and real-time advices for cardiovascular training (like a Polar Watch) (Another one commented about it and it’s a good idea) – I guess it would be okay if it just received and displayed information, embedding a sensor increases the cost and size. If you use an external sensor you have a wider choice of brand/cost/quality.
— Stream media to other devices (TV / Radio / Computer) It makes more sense for another device to do this, unless the watch itself contains the media. It would be fun though, although it’s hard to make this a selling point.
– NFC for easy payments – Again I’d leave that to the phone, but it may be more convenient to make NFC payments using a watch than a phone.
– Cable-less charging – Kinetic charging would be nice, but it seems no smart phone does this so I guess that doesn’t yield enough power. Wireless charging isn’t very efficient (yet), but I do like the idea of it.
– Wifi (client and hotspot) – Perhaps a bit over-the-top for a watch, but why not. Doesn’t make much sense if the watch doesn’t have 3/4G though.
– Open protocols to communicate with a maximum of devices – Yes!
– And a little personal touch… Why not a little cyberpunk touch 🙂 – Animated wallpapers!!!
>> That’s a very expensive watch!
For sure. It goes in the category of expensive gadget for niche market 🙂
>> Why not relay your voice to the phone?
Only if the watch is a remote for a phone. In MY idea it would be a stand alone device (as I said… Only my idea)
>> It MUST have 3-4-Whatever-G – What for? That would only make sense if it was a stand alone device. I’m looking for a watch that acts as an kind of remote for my phone.
Well.. IF you have your phone with you it’s nice to have a remote but I see it more like a standalone device. For me it’s like some people who want a micro-laptop (Nothing against that) but who carry an external HDD, an external DVD, an external coffee machine with them (Well… You get the idea).
I see it as a replacement for a phone… Not in every context but where a phone would be inconvenient or simply undesired. The usage as a remote control for a phone is just an additional function for me.
>> If by read you mean play, yes!
Yes. That was what I ment 🙂
As I said… My English is quiet poor… Sorry :-S
>> Embedding a sensor increases the cost and size. If you use an external sensor you have a wider choice of brand/cost/quality.
About the size. The sensor can be located in the watch strap and these kind of sensors are really small. I don’t think it would change the size.
If there is an external sensor it should also be bluetooth. The price for such a sensor is quiet high if I remember well.
But anyway… Why not both… Internal sensor is there but you can connect to an external bluetooth sensor 🙂
>> Stream media to other devices (TV / Radio / Computer) It makes more sense for another device to do this, unless the watch itself contains the media. It would be fun though, although it’s hard to make this a selling point.
Well… For me it would be a nice point. It could stream to my autoradio, my friends TV/computer, whatever.
>> NFC for easy payments – Again I’d leave that to the phone, but it may be more convenient to make NFC payments using a watch than a phone.
In the standalone device scenario there is no phone to make the payment 😉
>> (Wifi hotspot) Doesn’t make much sense if the watch doesn’t have 3/4G though.
True if it has no 3/4G… Untrue if it has… As it’s a hypothetic device, I added 3G.
>> Animated wallpapers!!!
Why not 🙂
Don’t worry about your English, it’s fine!
My assumption is that we all carry phones anyway and I don’t think a watch is a very good replacement for a cell phone. I’ve seen them advertised, but I’ve never seen anyone use one or even claim to own one.
A phone needs to be held against an ear and smart phones need to surf the web, do email and run apps.
When you already have a phone I don’t think it makes sense to duplicate any of its functions in another device, because you’d pay to have something you already have twice. Things 3/4G, GPS.
As the watch and phone are always close by you don’t need WiFi, just Bluetooth. For me such a watch is a display to view information from the phone so you don’t need to take it out.
If it’s a stand alone watch it would be a poor experience, unless it had a big screen, which would be like wearing your phone on your wrist. A way around this would be if it had a small screen, but could make it bigger, projection or stream it to a TV, but then it would be still difficult to have any controls on the small screen.
I recently saw this keyboard that was projected on the desk. So it was a small device that projected a keyboard on to a surface and you typed on this surface (like a desk or table). Probably not as good as a real keyboard, but very interesting and it would save space. Turn it off and it’s gone.
“Yet”? …doesn’t look like it can change much, physics stays the same.
But maybe kinetic charging would be enough for a simple(-ish) e-ink device – we move our hands more than pockets (where a smartphone mostly stays)
Physics stay the same (mostly), but techniques improve and/or change. If the charging mechanism were to improve more energy could be transferred.
I have wondered about this before, why not make a phone with kinetic and solar charging? It won’t be enough to actually charge it (unless you keep it in the sun for hours or run a marathon with it), but it would extend its operational window.
If I’m very busy at work and don’t use my iPhone during the day it’s almost still full when I get home. Add kinetic charging and I’m pretty sure it would be very close to 100% charge.
I guess it would be just not worth the added complexity and bulk…
And physics does stay the same WRT inductive charging, don’t expect many efficiency improvements (unless the phone or watch basically lays in the charger, like with Lumias)
Plenty of those from Seiko back then http://pocketcalculatorshow.com/nerdwatch/seiko-computer-watch-fun/
But apparently they didn’t prove very useful. Maybe trying to be useful is the wrong way, maybe it’s better to try being fun – like a watch with… Tetris
http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Nelsonic/Tetris.htm
Aye, I have the RC-1000 and UC-2002 watches plus the UC-2200 and UC-2100 keyboards.
The RC-1000 could be attached to a C64, allowing you set alarms and upload memos.
It had an hour chime, daily alarm, weekly, monthly and IIRC an alarm at date X. The nasty thing was ALL the alarms were either on or ALL alarms were off. Thus if I set an alarm for November 5th a few months in advance every hour, every day and every week the watch would make a noise. If I turned that off I wouldn’t remember the 5th of November.
BTW oldish hardware and… software – recently ( http://www.osnews.com/thread?546039 ) you were wondering if ~spider naming theme would be apt for browsers.
Well, there is this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachne_(web_browser)
(plus, the software category of web spiders, from the times of slower & more expensive connections)
Do you really need an alarm for that date?
It was just a random date I picked at random.
I could have picked your birthday, but I have no idea when that is. I guess I have 1 on 365 chance (ignoring leap years) of picking the right one.
Well… Remember, remember, The Fifth of November!
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder_Plot )
Well, in 2013 any date you randomly pick probably has a large number of historic events attached to it.
Oh, certainly – but it was still funny how you picked the date of Gunpowder Plot, in the context of the “remember the 5th of November” saying and… the presumed use of one of your watches types, Casio F-91W, to detonate explosives
Yes, that is curious!
http://www.chinavasion.com/search?q=bluetooth+watch
Watches that do all this have been around for a long time. I used to wear one of the bracelets that bluetooth paired to my phone. It’d vibrate on an incoming phone call, and I could accept or reject calls from it. It didn’t look techy at all, and you couldn’t tell it was a piece of tech. But it was nice during meetings, as it was “transparent” to the room, but I knew I had a call.
You can see in those results, there are way more options now, but the point is that they’ve been around for a bit. There are even ones in there with cameras.
I’d want all the normal digital watch functionality thought of first and only then add on the smart features. For example, use my favourite Casio watch as a starting point:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Casio-WV-58DU-1AVEF-Ceptor-Bracelet-Digital…
Metal strap, radio-controlled time (could replace this with Bluetooth time sync I suppose, but radio control is better – doesn’t require a nearby Bluetooth device), shows the *full* time and date (including the DST indicator and year and you can put it in the “correct” DDMM format – yay!), stopwatch, alarm, countdown timer, second time zone.
Now add smart features:
Colour display (or at least greyscale), notifications, vibrate for alarm/notifications, run custom apps (probably wouldn’t be full Android apps) sideloaded from Bluetooth.
Problem is that all that wouldn’t cost 30 pounds I bet!
Edited 2012-12-28 11:57 UTC
It could also be a wearable computer with decent cpu and memory.
With such a device you could
– connect to bluetooth display and keyboard, and process your data
– stream video to nearby TV and 3D glasses
– collect data about your health (heart,blood,etc)
It’s just for fun… Not trolling 🙂
http://www.acemprol.com/super-cool-mobile-phone-wrist-watch-t2864.h…
Standard classic timex style face:
http://www.styleceo.com/images/stores/41/m/mens-timex-classic-leath…
That hinges up to reveal a touch screen:
http://askalexia.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/ipod_nano_leather_a…