Home » Smart Watches Part 1–Exciting or not

Smart Watches Part 1–Exciting or not

By Sami Mughal
We feel that the mobile phones market is starting to saturate. While new phones do bring exciting new features to us, they seem to lack the wow factor we were feeling up to a couple of years ago. It seems like all the big players these days are focusing on creating smart watches, and we thought that we’d run a feature on them. See what we think they should be, what they should offer, how they should look and feel like, and how much they should cost. We asked all of our writers and here is the combined result of what they had to say:
 image
Smart watches – Exciting or Not?

Sami: Definitely yes. As I think this is the next natural progression from mobile phones, this is definitely something I am keenly looking forward to. However the likes of Pebble and other that exist still seem to lack something. Not exactly sure what it is, but something has stopped me from investing in one.
Amanda: On the whole, I would say yes. I know they would be helpful to a lot of people and much more discreet that checking your mobile.
Jonny: There is no doubt that the concept of smart watches is exciting. But the excitement that is out there is more to see what the big tech companies come up with. I don’t think people have really got to the point of being excited about owning or wearing a specific product yet (although the Pebble might differ in this regard).
Personally I love my watch. It is a nice watch that I was given for my 21 birthday, and it means a lot to me, so it is highly unlikely that I will actually switch to using a smart watch full time over my current one. Having said that, I am still excited to see what happens in this space in the future.
Geoff: I asked my son, 12, and my daughter, 16, if they were interested. They knew of the rumours and were really excited about the possibilities and were disappointed that I could not show them a picture of one. They envisaged a kind of mini-iPod touch screen, with touch interface and apps and Siri. My daughter became excited about the potential for a smart calendar that would show her where she was supposed to be and what she was supposed to be doing at any time of day, especially at school, where they have a confusing bi-weekly schedule. I thought a weather display would be handy, as that’s the main thing I check on my iPad before cycling to work in the morning. Probably the biggest general feature would be that it should display up-to-the-minute information, of whatever the user is primarily interested in. Could be temporal data like time, date, weather, temperature. Could be financial, like stocks and shares. Could be sports events. Could be personal social network and communications stuff.
A cool function would be a display for the “find my friends” functionality, where you would see where your friends and family are in relation to you, like the motion tracking devices in the Alien franchise movies, or the map in Harry Potter that shows you the whereabouts of other people in real time.
I told my kids about the old American detective cartoon character Dick Tracy’s smart watch which he could famously use to temporarily stop time for everyone but himself. “Hold everything!” he would command. It even worked to counter the power of gravity, so that just before hitting the pavement at the end of a fatal fall, he could extricate himself from certain death. Now that’s thinking big!
The Apple rumour mill has been churning out smart watch – iWatch – rumours for a number of months. More recently, Samsung was said to be working on a smart watch, though the uncharitable would say they were just putting their hat in the ring so that when Apple releases their watch, Samsung can get their clone machines operating with least delay. And now it seems Microsoft is entering the arena. Is it another case of everyone trying to predict what Apple is going to do, because it is Apple, in recent years, who, in the words of Steve Jobs, instead of trying to keep up with the metaphorical puck, so often manage to skate to where the puck will be?
Bernie: Frankly speaking, I can’t get excited about those at all. I’m sure there will be a huge fan base, especially from Apple fan boys (if only for the fact that it’s fruit branded). For myself, I can’t see the point of having them.
I like/prefer real watches. I don’t like the idea of yet another display to worry about. I don’t like the idea of another device which will require data plan to go with it (Wi-Fi only wouldn’t really work would it?). And frankly speaking? All those functions people see it doing, they’re right in my phone, which is in my pocket, usually around 10-15 cm below my wrist.
Lottie: I can’t see the appeal of smart watches or why anyone would actually want one.
I know people still wear watches but a lot of people my age don’t, we have phones to check the time on.
This is just another piece of gadgetry that is unnecessary. If t does everything our phones do but our phones can call/text why do we need duplicate tech? That’s just one more thing to be mugged over.
I can see any upside or the point I these at all. Surely anything we can do on our phones would be better as the screen would be bigger. That’s what people like about tablets, the screen is big but they are still portable.
To round it all off I do not see the point.
Conclusion:
Will Smart Watches be the marmite in the next few years? While smart phones attracted most of us, smart watches seem to have a hit and miss among our writers, and they all love technology and new features. It is safe to say though, that while most of us may not be excited, we are all very keen to see what the new Apple, Samsung, Microsoft and Google watches will offer.

In Part 2, we discuss the features and functionality in a bit more detail.
https://www.oxgadgets.com/2013/04/smart-watches-part-2-functionality.html

Related Posts

2 thoughts on “Smart Watches Part 1–Exciting or not

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *