Moto 360, a futuristic watch scooped up its share of praise before it’d even landed on store shelves. The now there’s also the LG G Watch R, a device which tackles the smartwatch problem from a slightly different angle. Read the review here.
LG G Watch R review
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Eugenia Loli
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In 12 months time we’ll have smart fridges, smart shoes, smart handbags and smart hats.
In 2 years time we’ll have smart shirts, smart coffee cups, smart dildos and smart dining room tables.
I don’t know if we’ll ever get “smart people”… 😉
There is already some “smart ass” out there…
Anyway, I’d like to find a smart pocket watch, with a super sleek form factor :
http://www.amazon.fr/gousset-Ancienne-Montre-pendentif-M%C3~*~@…
http://www.amazon.com/KS-Steampunk-Mechanical-Smooth-Numbers/dp/B00…
http://www.amazon.com/Clip-Doctors-Nurses-Unisex-Carabiner/dp/B00JI…
Dual screen, gps, alti/barometer, compas, perpetual calendar, things and stuff. Classy yet modern.
Kochise
Edited 2014-10-25 09:07 UTC
I’ve already been considering “smart phones” as the modern day pocket watch. I welcome the return to wrist-watches.
http://images.rapgenius.com/f98a61bab27f28a224091256134af411.500×55…
Neck Watches would work, too.
I want matching tinted google glasses with night vision and xray camera built into the Neck Watch to feed the glasses. I don’t need a flash light if I have these killer features.
And with its bass speaker it plays excellent music. Just be careful on a full stomach.
I thought we already had smart dildos. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc.
Casio Databank for life! While this review calls 36 hours a “battery champ”, my current Casio Databank has a 10 *YEAR* battery. Read that again and reflect… 10 YEARS.
does it have the same features?
I do not think so, but it was created ten years (or more) ago too
Yep, that’s the point. It’s 1980 era technology that I find to be infinitely more useful and practical than the best that 2014 has to offer.
Edited 2014-10-26 02:32 UTC
That’s a valid opinion, but others might have different opinions and needs.
For example, I understand that I can’t have a powerful computer in my pocket or on my wrist with a 300ppi screen that has the same battery as a device with a 50×50 pixel monochrome display that only tells time, or only makes calls and plays snake.
It’s like comparing my tricycle from 30 years ago with a modern car.
But what can you actually do with a smart-watch? I imagine they could be okay for collecting heartrate-data and such, but is there much else? Off the top of my head I, at least, can’t think of anything that wouldn’t be easier on a phone.
Apple’s strategy with their mobile devices seems to be to create a platform, make it attractive to developers, and let those developers find creative uses for it. They don’t have a ‘killer app’ for the product, because they’re expecting a market of developers to come up with a range of applications appealing to different types of users. It worked for the iPhone in unexpected and unplanned ways. Will it work for this new watch? Who can tell? I’m not into carry-everywhere computing, so this is only of academic interest to me, but it’s an interesting strategy anyway.
Not sure you can really have a killer app for a ‘smart watch’ that wouldn’t be done better on a smart phone other than a possible bio-interface and I doubt the technology can be relied upon for anything worth the bother anytime soon.
Could be wrong and as I can’t stand even a dumb watch on the wrist it’ll be my loss, suppose.
Apple didn’t even allow for 3rd party apps on the iPhone for the first year… that largely happened only because of jailbreakers/Cydia pressure, who showed the way.
Err… yes? Hence “unexpected and unplanned”.
Well, if it doesn’t have comparable features we’re comparing apples and oranges.
Apples and Casios, actually.
UI is critical in the wrist space, moreso than any other space.
extra clicks or confusion in navigating the OS will kill any watch platform before it starts. the watch better be easier than the phone to control, with much quicker access and task completion than the phone.
if google thinks people are going to talk to their watches as the primary interface, it’s the same thing as google thinking people will wave their hands up and down next to their eyes for a glasses interface. oh yeah, they do think that. stupid.
i would not be surprised if apple cleans up this market just like the mp3 player and the smartphone market. before apple entered there were lots of half-baked ideas and no one doing the difficult R&D on human-machine interaction like apple does. these machines can do amazing things, but if they can’t deal with YOU and empower YOU then they are dead products. they should not embarrass you, like yelling at a watch does.
apple is going to bring out a new UI built specifically for the wrist, with silent, physical, and repetitive input processes, haptic input and output, and voice control too if you insist on yelling commands at a piece of plastic and metal. i think that’s the least effective UI there is though, and google also seems to think that touching the screen is the only other way to interact with the OS, except our fingers will block the whole screen when we touch, so i just think they are being silly at this point.
The UI of a classical wristwatch is basically that you turn your wrist and move your cuff to look at it. It’s not built for interaction. Somehow, Apple’s crack R&D team forgot all of that, and made a combined tough & twist UI, designed for awkward interaction. Sure they’re going to clean up the market, with fawning fanbois hailing their new Homermobile-on-a-wrist like the second cumming of Christ on sliced bread. I find it a bit amazing that you already decided their watch is so fantastically good, without any knowledge at all.
Strangely enough it seems like the Apple/Google roles are reversed for this type of hardware compared to phone and tablet:
* Google is first
* Google has the simpler user interface
* Google has the more limited feature set
* Google has the lower price
(when other tablets came to the market they had trouble matching Apple’s price)
Apple has never been good at fighting in a market that they didn’t start. I don’t think their SmartWatch is going to be a success (actually, I don’t think ANY smartwatch is going to be a success)
Eh? They didn’t start the MP3 player market, or the smartphone market, or even the tablet market, They were late to all of them but they found the version that people wanted.
I agree that the smart watch remains a crappy device across the market, but I wouldn’t underestimate the apple watch. Apples entries into new markets are almost universally panned and then go on to dominate. Remember the criticisms of the first iPhone and iPad and iPod? They were all trailing the market leaders in many ways but still sold hundreds of millions because they got the important stuff really right
I said “started the market”, not “started the product category”. And first generation devices (even from Apple) don’t go on to sell hundreds of millions of devices and do have many flaws in them. It is all about how quickly you can fix those flaws and about convincing customers that your device will be great for them.
I don’t underestimate the Apple SmartWatch, but I can’t see a reason to spend 350 dollar for the simplest version of something that only seems useful for watching notifications a few seconds quicker. I was very happy when I stopped wearing a watch and am not looking forward to start again
How does that change anything? Neither the iPod, iPhone, or iPad started the “market” for MP3 players, smartphones, or tablets. The market existed, it just wasn’t as big. Just like for smart watches today.
Completely agree with you. I certainly won’t be getting an Apple smart watch or any other at this point. Just like I had no desire to buy a first gen iPhone or iPod or iPad. That said at least I saw the potential in those devices, where so far I’m mystified about what might make me want a smart watch. There just doesn’t seem to be a good use for them yet.
<I cannot believe I am kind of taking Apple’s side on this. Normally I am the one saying that their stuff is expensive, behind the curve and overhyped>
I think this is about semantics. The fact that tablets existed before the iPad is obvious, but there was no market (supply and demand) for them. It really was the iPad that started the market, but not the product category. The difference between the two is about volume/sales/mindshare more than anything. I think this article sums it up nicely:
[quote]It’s not easy to pin-point when exactly tablet computers landed in our palms. It was a gradual, quiet and directionless revolution that stuttered along until one idea changed everything.
There were just eight tablet-like devices between 1993 and 2009 before Apple introduced the first iPad – none managed to take off. Post iPad and in 2012 alone there were over 128 million tablet sales worldwide[/quote]
source: http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-computing/tablets/meet-the-tab…
The case for the iPhone is a little less clear (I used a Nokia N97 that I found superior to the iphone of that moment). But I cannot deny the enormous influence of the iPhone (and Android soon after) on the market: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone#iPhone_.26_Android
And the case for the iPod is indeed even less clear (there were many mp3-players already available that people actually started to buy in bulk). Apples influence in this market is also undeniable and they blew up this market
Nonsense. The iPhone and the iPad were hyped as revolutionary even before they were publically disclosed. The biggest detractors were the competition, and people fed up with the Apple hype machine. And to be perfectly fair, the iPad never was revolutionary.
Apple were also supposed to revolutionise the textbook industry, and then delivered the largely forgotten iBooks Author (which also failed at getting important things right). This product was hyped even by mainstream media the days before it was revealed. Does it dominate today? Not really, and this was, in the words of Gizmodo’s Brian Barrett, ‘nothing less than the future of education’. It was, of course, only the future of marketing.
Apple is building their new wearable platform, following very closely to the iPhone/iPad model — They don’t make the killer app, and they don’t push ridiculous features that don’t exist yet. They just make the core experience solid and simple and play with the rest of the apple ecosystem.
I agree that I won’t pay +$300 for a smartwatch right away. but i want to get rid of the smart phone, move past it, i’m done with it at this point. we have iPads, computers, and smart TVs everywhere. i rarely need the voice line for business or personal use. a phone is just a too small tablet these days, and the one i use for the cell radio.
as soon as the wrist computer can do my basic communication, location, and scheduling without the phone i’ll be a buyer.
i do think apple is making a bold move here forking iOS for wearables. the haptic input & output, the infinite circular scroll, and the limited screen space makes for a whole new paradigm for user entry.
i hope they are building WatchOS for non-visual use, i think that’s the future interface that most are missing.
if the thing can do all sorts of vibrations from all sorts of sources (software or human), coupled with it’s location and positional awareness, i think there are new markets opening up for software that knows what you are actually doing without you telling it. this smarter software also doesn’t have to announce or alert the room to it’s findings either, it can gently vibrate your wrist in infinite patterns and personalizations.
Edited 2014-10-27 16:20 UTC
The only new feature I want from Apple is a memory stick interface that works common across devices. It bugs me that they still sell 16gig models at the tail end of 2014. They already cripple the products at the low end in comparison to flagship models, using more than just memory size.
Investors in Apple should be pissed iTunes is not just still a kludge in 2014, but that most products make options to use iTunes less and less optimal year after year. Apple is killing its own iTunes customer base.
There is nothing in the iWatch that makes it any better (or worse) than Google Wear. They are essentially the same. And what little differences there are will disappear over the next year or two as each one imitates the other’s best features.
Not only that, but what they both offer is so little that it is not worth the effort of lugging on your wrist such a huge and ugly contraption, and then caring for it like a tamagochi to ensure it does not die before tea time. If the battery lasted for a month, maybe the marginal usefulness of a smart watch might be worth the effort. But the pain of taking it on and off every day and ensuring it is always charged vastly outweighs what little it does for you.
Devices with passive grayscale LCDs could achieve long enough waketimes, but nobody offers them. Maybe the usefulness is so low that the devices are meaningless without the bling factor of a glow-in-the-dark full color screen.
I think you hit on the problem, its not a passively lit display. I still use a Timex digital with indiglo. I rarely need indiglo because natural lighting is sufficient to give me the numbers.
I still know people that use grayscale Kindle readers. They stay charges for a month of reading. One month. How is that not the goal?
Pebble smartwatch.
That’s the worst product naming I’ve seen in a while.
WHAT?!?!? It’s a brilliant name! When it fails to sell in any quantity, just imagine all of the pun-filled “Who Watches the Watch Rs” headlines!
I think they have the idea all wrong. If I had a small hole in my phone for a band (think Wii controller wristband) then I can wear my phone on my wrist or around my neck. And I get all the phone features that way.
About the only way these smart watches are going to be useful is in grayscale and with everything turned off by default. If they want to connect then push a button to do so, but connections are on timers.
Basically Samsung’s super battery saver mode.
Seriously, the whole draw of a smart watch to me would be so I wouldn’t have to carry a separate phone. The reason why most people stopped wearing watches is because their phone serves well enough for a clock.
Now on the other hand, if they could get one that wasn’t so crap on battery life (I mean come on, one of those biggest draws of battery for a phone is the screen. Smaller watch screens should take a lot less power, plus, use an eInk screen so you can see it outside). and actually include phone/bluetooth, you’d have a nice item that people could get into.