Intel's cheap and Android's free: Not any more, says TAG Heuer (Comparatively) inexpensive Swiss watch maker TAG Heuer has chummed up with ad giant Google and silicon goliath Intel to launch a luxury smartwatch powered by a Chipzilla chipset and running Android Wear. Google is evidently keen to join Apple and Microsoft in digging like a truffle-hog into the market for wearable, …
> That'd be a good concept - produce a module that established watch makers can incorporate into their designs.
Agreed - if the case became a standard that the module could be transplanted in to or out of.
Being able to Upgrade the hardware module while retaining the "luxury" case would be a lovely way to combat obsolesce.
Ok.. cue the watch snob...
1) Rolex and Omega are not the front runners although they do make some fine watches.
While I own a couple Omegas (1960's vintage Seamaster and 45th Anniversary Moon Landing Speedmaster) I also own other higher end watches as well like an AP Royal Oak.
Depending on who you talk with, the companies in the top tier tend to be Patek, Jaeger, IWC etc ...
These tend to be technological works of art.
2) Like the earlier comment about Tag Heur, Omega is actually now owned by Swatch.
Same for some of the other watch companies out there.
In terms of cool watches, why have a smart watch when I have a smart phone in my pants pocket?
If you want the next thing in watches...
http://www.hodinkee.com/blog/richard-hoptroffs-atomic-watch-prototype-combines
Now that's something I wouldn't mind having on my wrist. :-)
>In terms of cool watches, why have a smart watch when I have a smart phone in my pants pocket?
Because you can't read your phone when it is in you pocket? (Unless you have transparent trousers) This is the very same reason that wristwatches became popular over fob watches.
Don't get me wrong - there is no current smartwatch implementation that I want, but the concept itself is sound.
Unless I'm wearing a short sleeve golf shirt or a t-shirt, I need to tug on my shirt so I can see my watch. Pulling the phone out of my pocket is about as much work.
My point was that if you want something that tells time, your phone will give you a relatively accurate time (it gets it from the network) and you already have it.
Don't get me wrong. I love watches and I have a growing collection.
The smart watch doesn't really get you anything to justify the price. You still need to carry the phone in order for the watch to be useful and the watch's battery life is less than the power reserve on some of the manual watches.
One cool feature is that you can change / customize the dial look.
But if you want something cool... get an atomic clock that you can wear on your wrist. The only downside is that the batter life is still only a day, but the cool / geek factor justifies the 15K estimated price tag.
(The clock on a chip component alone is $1500 retail.) I would like to see it more in a pocket watch because of its size, and then you could add some capabilities. While it has an accurate clock, you still need to sync it with something and then ... you will have an accurate clock that will only drift a couple of ns a month. (In order to synch it, you'd need an accurate base station w a radio antenna and a gps antenna. )
+1
Tech is generally rubbish compared to decent watch engineering.
Apple's "shiny" is competing with dell's laptops and Windows 8. It isn't a very high bar to jump over - nothing like the the proper "shiny" industry.
Apart from going for a classic analogue-type watch and an ultra-low power bluetooth link to a buzzer/alarm system (either as a simple reminder that something should be happening or to get you to check your phone) I can't see smart watches being cheap enough to hit utility-cost equilibrium in a reasonable place. Smartphones do lots, even if its pointless lots. Smart watches... not so much.
It reminds me of the 80's - 14 different alarm "tunes", a calculator, stopwatch, 7 time zones, a timer, and precision to hundredths of a second on a digital watch. It was all cool for a 14-year-old boy, but in the end it was mostly unneeded, too fiddly and really rather ugly. The grown-ups went back to simple and elegant analogue systems that are mostly maintenance free and reliable for years at a time.
"had mine for over 10 years and cost about the same as a decent laptop of the same era"
As much as a laptop, for a watch made by a company famous for over-priced champagne and perfume? If any other readers are proposing to invest laptop money in a pretend prestige watch churned out by a $30bn a year corporation, send the money to me instead, my need is greater than yours.
For a decent watch my money's still on a Seiko 5. Honest, mechanical, self winding, durable, and yours for as little as fifty quid (and made in Singapore, or at least mine was). But unavailable in any of those comedy hugely over-sized and overly ostentatious cases that seem de rigeur for "me too" Swiss watches.
The very idea of a TAG smart watch seems to me to be the epitome of vanity - a device with commodity innards that will last barely a couple of days without being recharged, useless without a phone, and then you're paying extra for the faux prestige of the name plastered on a mass produced case all masquerading as "Swiss craftsmanship". Mind you, the margins that LVMH will be trousering will make Apple's 50% profit margin look like the most amazing giveaway.
Tag Heuer had a range of 'Vertu-lite' phones - one a classic candybar with keypad and sapphire screen, another was a Android affair - with all the usual bits of alligator and precious metal hung off it.
http://www.phonearena.com/phones/manufacturers/TAG-Heuer
What's the point in owning a smart watch when you have a smart phone in your pants and the watch is pretty much worthless without the phone.
http://www.hodinkee.com/blog/richard-hoptroffs-atomic-watch-prototype-combines
This is an atomic clock on your wrist.
Sure the battery life sucks. (About the same as a smart phone)... but think of the cool factor.
It being 3G I can't see much other appeal apart from it being the watch for 'down the boozer'.
All those mega expensive watches have one thing in common though, that being exactly the same as what Apple has, 99% all marketing and perception.
Maybe they will turn 'plain ugly' into everyone's wish list.
... between the length of time people use watches for, and the length of time mobile phone APIs are supported for.
Some of the highest-priced watch models are more heirlooms than gadgets, but even a £100 watch will give you five to ten years of use. So, cast your mind back ten years in the mobile phone industry, and think of what "future-proof" OS choice a device maker would have made then. Now, go buy a phone running Blackberry, Symbian or Windows Mobile 6 today...
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