There is no touchscreen or Apple logo. You’ve never heard of the designer. Its icons look straight out of 1992. And in fact, we found it in the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog—yes, that living fossil of technological innovation from a time when plug-in shoe-shiners were all the rage.
It’s the "No Charge Smart Watch." It uses Bluetooth to put email, call, and SMS alerts on your wrist. And whereas existing smartwatches like the Moto 360 can’t make it a day before plugging in (and the Apple Watch’s runtime is still undisclosed but likely similar), the No Charge Smart Watch runs for a year on a standard watch battery....
Gilt apparently suggested designer Michael Bastian to the folks at Hewlett-Packard. Bastian has watch design experience and was respected in the watch community. The high-end Swiss watch maker Audemars Piguet even worked with Bastian a number of times to place their timepieces on the wrists of Michael Bastian clothing collection runway models. Bastian accepted the project, and now, the three companies were set to embark on a journey that was intended to be a dream team of efforts from the three talented entities. Did they succeed?
A few days ago from writing this post, the Michael Bastian MB Chronowing watch officially went on sale available exclusively to Gilt.com members. I don't at this time know the sales numbers, but since I was with the teams the evening before the sale began I was able to experience their excitement first hand. The energy was palpable, but so was the muted anxiety of selling a totally new type of product for them....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Interesting story of the design and marketing of the Michael Bastian/HP Chronowing smart watch.
Samsung’s shown itself to be entirely unafraid when it comes to smartwatches. It’s willing to try any size, any spec, any combination of features in an attempt to figure out what consumers want in a wearable. Its latest try, the Gear S, is a combination of Samsung’s newest and best ideas — and a couple of ideas it’ll soon leave by the roadside as well.
The Gear S is not designed to replace your smartphone, I’m told. It’s designed to let you leave it at home, though, or in the other room. Its built-in connectivity means that even when it’s far away from your phone it can still send and receive messages, and get turn-by-turn directions. The Gear S runs Tizen — Samsung says the Gear Store has 1,000 apps in it — and can do almost everything without a phone. The Gear Manager app still requires your phone, and you’re not exactly going to want to send emails on the tiny QWERTY keys on the Gear S, but this device generally has no need for your smartphone....
The software giant has been developing a cross-platform gadget that continuously measures heart rate, Forbes has learned.
Microsoft is the latest technology giant preparing to jump into the wearables market, with plans to offer a sensor-rich smartwatch that measures heart rate and synchs with iPhones, Android phones and Windows Phones, Forbes has learned.It’s a surprising development in the ongoing conversation about wearables that till now has been dominated by Samsung and Apple.
The device will draw on optical engineering expertise from Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect division to continuously measure heart rate through the day and night, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the company’s plans, while the battery will last for two days, roughly on par with Samsung’s Gear Fit.
The timeline for the watch’s release date is unclear but Microsoft could be gunning for as soon as this summer....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Microsoft smart watch is coming but it also reflects a strategic direction shift for the company.
Motorola design chief Jim Wicks and his team had spent a year and a half designing the device that would ultimately become the beautiful Moto 360 smartwatch, but every initial result was lacking. "Every time you do one," he tells me, "no matter how awesome you might think it is, if it’s square, everyone’s just kind of like ‘ehhh...’ And you sit there and you think about making it a little bit thinner, or a little bit bigger, a little bit heavier — you work for all those things and you still get that kind of feeling. And then finally we realized we’re not going to break through that ceiling, even with our peers, if we can’t get out of the ‘eh’ zone."
After two rounds of designs, prototypes, and tepid internal reactions, Motorola went back to the basics. Rather than reinvent wristwear or build a blocky rectangle like the Galaxy Gear or the Pebble Steel, Motorola decided to mimic what it hoped to replace: the elegant watches we’ve had on our wrists for decades. "We came to the realization that if we’re going to do this, we need to really embrace what this space is all about," he says. So Motorola turned the Moto 360 into a beautiful, circular stainless-steel wearable that looks more like a Timex than a Moto X. Wicks says it got the same reaction from all the industry experts he showed it to: "Yep, that’s a watch."...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Love the approach: "Motorola’s goal, he says, was to make hardware that gets out of the way."
...Square’s goal is to make payments quicker and easier for both business and consumers, so the company has an intense interest in wearable tech. When asked in a recent interview whether he thinks Google Glass is an interesting product, Dorsey answered that he doesn’t see much value in Google Glass right now, but he’s intrigued by devices that wrap around the wrist – like Apple’s rumored iWatch – because they feel more natural....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Rev up your Smart Watch as the market starts to expand with early adopters like Jack Dorsey.
...Samsung also introduced follow ups to the Galaxy Gear smartwatch: the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo. The Gear 2 is supposed to fix “pain points” from the original Galaxy Gear. It’s thinner than the first-gen model, with a 2-megapixel camera on its face rather than sitting cyclops-like on its strap. The smartwatch is made of brushed metal, and will be able to sync with 17 Galaxy-branded devices. It will also work with an expanded suite of apps, giving it greater functionality.
The Gear 2 Neo’s main difference is that it has a polycarbonate finish. Both models include a 1.63-inch Super AMOLED display and 4 GB of memory inside so they can act as an MP3 player, whether your phone is paired nearby over Bluetooth or not. You’ll be able to swap out the bands too, for maximum personalization.
The Gear Fit, as its name would suggest, is Samsung’s sporty wearable for the Jawbone Up and Nike FuelBand space. The watch has a 1.84-inch curved AMOLED display and can track your steps and heart rate, as well as deliver notifications for incoming calls, emails, and text messages.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Samsung keeps its wearable line rolling with the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo smartwatch
These are the 10 Smart watches to look out for in 2014 - it was taken from a list of watches that were demoed at the CES 2014 in Las vegas for smart phones (10 Smart Watches to look out for in 2014 http://t.co/28aCq0qxBV...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
So, riddle me this. How many smart watches does it take to catch the consumer's attention? And how many will survive?
While I was down at CES 2014 last week, I spent a lot of time looking at smart watches. In addition to showing the date and time, these watches also alert the wearer of incoming calls, text, emails or had other applications.
I have a Pebble watch and I was interested in what other similar watches are out there. I like my Pebble, but there is one really annoying thing about it: it doesn’t show that it needs to be charged. It just stops working – goes dead.
I looked at seven watches (actually, eight, but more about that later). There were a lot more than eight at CES, but with 3,000 vendors, I did what I could. I did not look at the Samsung, OR Sony watches as there are lots of reviews of them. The ones I looked at could be divided into three broad categories: colour screen watches ($350 and up), black and white screen watches ($130 and up) and one other with unique features....
The smart watch category is already getting crowded. Catherine Aczel Boivie notes 3 categories: color screen, black-and-white, and other unique features.
Pebble will not be following Apple down the 'fashion' route, according to founder and CEO Eric Migicovsky, with the company preferring to concentrate on making smartwatches that are useful and cost-effective.
Speaking to The Telegraph, following the launch of the Pebble smartwatch in the UK earlier this month, Migicovsky said that simplicity and affordability are two of the main reasons people buy Pebble watches....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Smart watch wars between Paul and Pebble are growing.
As we approach Peak Smart Watch at the Apple event next week, manufacturers are racing to offer product to those who might not want to bow down to Cupertino in the coming months. The latest contender is the Moto 360, a steel and leather beauty that launched today alongside the new Motorola .
Although I’ve been duly impressed by the Samsung Gear series, you will immediately see that the design language of the 360 is far more chic. Made of a round piece of coated steel and featuring a nice leather band and Gorilla Glass crystal, the watch looks more like a Misfit Shine than a nerd accouterment.
How does it work? Well, if you’re not familiar with the vagaries of Android Wear, not very well at first. The interface consists of notifications that appear over the various watch faces available as well as a voice activated screen that allows you to ask for various pieces of information....
You probably won’t need a Windows Phone if you want Microsoft’s expected smart watch. Previously, the device was said to work with Android and iOS and now a new report suggests it will work with PCs, Macs and even the Xbox One.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Microsoft looks like it is serious about leading in this wearable watch sector.
Ask any serious watch aficionado why they're hesitant to switch to a smartwatch, and their reasons will have nothing to do with functionality--but everything to do with how ugly the current crop of smartwatches are. The Modillian, a replacement strap buckle that adds Bluetooth, hopes to fix that by adding basic smartwatch capabilities to more stylish timepieces.
As Samsung's Galaxy Gear commercial illustrates, the desire for a truly smart wrist-worn device is as old as the electronics industry itself. We've lusted after smart watches for so long that we've melded the two words into one utopian noun: a smartwatch. 2013 has been an undeniably good year for smartwatch enthusiasts. From the successful Kickstarter project that gave birth to the Pebble to Samsung and Sony's most sincere efforts to commercialize the category, the buyer's choice has never been wider. And that trend's only set to continue, with Nokia, Google, Apple, and Microsoft all actively eyeing the wearable device category.
Even as we keep advancing toward the end goal, however, much progress remains to be made. Prices are still too high for most consumers, functionality and battery life are too limited, and designs are a little bit too large and macho to be appealing to a truly wide audience. As Ian Drew, now executive VP at ARM and formerly a senior manager at Intel, told The Verge recently, smartwatches are still in the pre-iPod era of their development. That’s not to say that the tech industry is just waiting for Apple to show the way, but the definitive, trend-setting device that everyone tries to either beat or emulate simply hasn’t materialized yet. While we wait for someone, anyone, to deliver the ultimate smartwatch, what can the best devices available today tell us about perfecting the smart wrist-accessory?...
Jeff Domansky's insight:
The confusion and profusion of smartwatches gets a look from The Verge.
The best compliment I can give Sony’s SmartWatch 2 is that it works. I still believe that wearable devices are in their infancy, and the SmartWatch 2 is proof of this. While it’s filled with great ideas, a readable screen and actually looks like a fairly cool watch, the SmartWatch 2 is still more a novelty than an essential gadget buy.
Here’s the question you’ll be asking yourself: “Why do I need a smartwatch when everything I need is right on my smartphone?” And it’s a great question, a succinct one at that. Why does anyone need the SmartWatch 2 (SW2 as Sony calls it, and so will I for the remainder of the review)? Because it’s a decent second-screen for your notifications and I actually found myself keeping my phone in my pocket. When a notification came in, the SW2 buzzed, I quickly scanned my messages and carried on with my life. There’s not much else to the SW2 outside of it being an incredibly pricey notification hub, but it does carry with it a few nifty built-in apps, as well as ones that need to be downloaded after the fact....
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Mostly positive review of the newly-updated Sony SmartWatch 2.
Thinking about buying a smart watch soon? Have you already bought one or know of someone who does? Check out this infographic from DPFOC that lays out why they think that the smart watch is on a short life.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
This infographic nicely points out the barriers to the market and the competitive challenges faced by every smart watch creator, manufacturer and marketer. At the end of the day, one question remains: do I need it enough to buy?
This is the CES of the wearable gadget. And, while there are all sorts of technologies you can wear—after all, earbuds are wearable—the big explosion is in fitness trackers.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
Tracking wearable technology innovations that have the potential to grow into real products that the market will actually buy. one thing's for sure. There will be plenty of company and product failures on the road to success.
You knew it was bound to happen, and happen it has. While it apparently still has a ways to go to catch up to Samsung's Galaxy Gear, a Kickstarter-backed company moving some 200,000 or so units in a matter of months is nothing to scoff at. To wit,Pebble‘s seeing a massive spike in developer action now that SDK 2.0 is in the wild and the watch has added full iOS 7 Notification Center support. In a bid to funnel all of that activity into a central location, the outfit on Wednesday announced that the Pebble appstore will launch “in early 2014,” and interested developers can begin submitting their SDK 2.0 Pebble apps immediately.
Jeff Domansky's insight:
A strong move into creates market potential for the Pebble smart watch.
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The smart watch market is heating up.