| The name "Watch" misleads. No one¹ needs a dedicated device to tell time anymore. What may work in the market is one more tier of information interface. cloud > desktop > tablet > phone > ???. I keep my phone in a front trouser pocket. I find that the overwhelming majority of the "dig out the phone"² events during the day are to observe a bit of recently arrived information, or, less frequently, to issue a temporally context sensitive command. Both of these actions would be easily handled by a tiny display with enough room for a few touch zones and limited gesture recognition.³ It doesn't need to be strapped to my wrist. I might prefer it clipped to my sleeve or in a shirt pocket. (return of the fob to keep it from escaping?) It won't work for everyone. It will be useless to people who spend the day with uncorrected farsighted vision. They might as well pull out their phones as their eye glasses. It only needs enough energy to get through the day, I'll put it in a charger at night. Make it cheap enough and sell it in a two pack and I'll just swap them in the morning. Do the software right with proximity detection, and I'll have a virtual one on my desktop screen, and a slightly larger one stuck to my car dashboard (solar charger to avoid cable). ␄ ¹ except nurses, and… ² I also find that my "drop the phone" events are almost all precipitated by a "dig out the phone". Eliminate the dig, avoid the drop. Women who use purses appear to have similar issues. ³ I'd also like to give it voice commands rather than navigating a complex UI, but that is just feeding a mic to the phone or tablet. And if I could hold it to my ear and let it tell me something that would also be great, but don't make it too big to cram in that feature. Still, we are talking a <$100 device here. Bluetooth 4.0 covers all the communications, tiny touch display, speaker, mic, accelerometer. |
COTS "Sony Ericsson liveview bluetooth phone remote". $25 from amazon, eligible for free prime shipping too. Comes with a clip holder and a watch holder.
UI is a fail, also charging. Oh and its buggy and the battery life is supposedly dismal. Aside from the 99 other things it can do when its actually working, which is why the UI fails, it can act as a music player remote (hit pause, etc). I wanted one for in my car as a simple remote when I'm listening to music. The UI doesn't do "simple" and is worse than just fumbling around with the phone. Also charging issues in the car. Oh well.
The biggest problem with bluetooth watches and phones is all the marketing is front loaded on R+D, everyone hears about "might be sold next year". No marketing at or beyond launch, no one knows there's a zillion already available. It doesn't help that whats delivered is usually an epic fail if GOOG shipped something that merely met its advertised specs, unfortunately that in itself would be revolutionary in the bluetooth watch field. GOOG is good at that, look a the nexus line, its basically an honest device without the shovelware and thats all you need to beat the competition who have dishonest claims and chock full of shovelware.