Nokia's great lost smartwatch? #SavedYouALandfill Footage has emerged of Nokia's never-released smartwatch – suggesting Microsoft was wise to kill the project when it acquired the Finns' mobile division. The Nokia watch prototype in the video dates to the zenith of the smartwatch hype in 2014. Nokia showed the device in private at that year's Mobile World Congress, and it was …
>>HoloLens still exists..
>as a technical demonstrator. Let's wait until it's a shipping product eh?
It's shipping now in numbers for developers - and by far the best thing they've done in a while. Whether they'll have the balls to ship a dozen consumer boat loads cheap as a loss leader is another matter. Trouble is MS still think they're a premium brand.
Time will come though. The wrist watch was always less capable than the pocket watch, but it took over when it was capable enough. Carrying a slab of frangible glass round in the pocket is not great, and if you work in a vaguely hostile environment and only a bigger and stronger slab will survive then its even worse. As for what developments will make the wrist platform good enough, time will tell, cos I don't know!
". Carrying a slab of frangible glass round in the pocket is not great, and if you work in a vaguely hostile environment and only a bigger and stronger slab will survive then its even worse. "
Which is why they invented "hunter" style pocket watches - personally, I'd take a hunter, in a case designed for the expected conditions, over a wristwatch any day of the week when it comes to surviving extremes. There's no rule that says the case has to be made of a soft material like gold, and if made properly moving a pocket watch mechanism between an industrial strength hunter style case for daily use and a more traditional case for evening wear would be a trivial task occupying little more time than changing wrist watches would.
Combine the above with the fact that under normal circumstances my torso is less exposed to random violence than my wrist then the pocket watch (IMO, as always) comes out a clear winner in the survivability stakes.
Wrist watches got their big push during WW I, where ease of access to the watch was determined to be more important than its life span.
People need to be convinced of a need for it to have mass market appeal. This is one of those things though that need to be tried before you would want to buy it unless you're a bit of a tech geek. I wouldn't be without my pebble, but that's cos it lasts a good week before I have to charge it and it is genuinely useful to check notifications and callers say during a meeting without rudely getting my phone out.
I'm not really sold on the colour screen and WiFi etc on a watch as until they get the battery life sorted for such features the watch becomes a burden rather than a help.
I know it is the vogue to hate on smart watches but in the year I've had my Apple Watch it has proven to be a useful gadget. I can read e-mail on it so I don't have to dig out my phone or laptop, calendar events pop up, it actually works really nicely as a GPS so I don't have to walk around the streets holding my phone looking like a tourist, and I can tell the time on it too. Most of all though, I use the fitness tracking features and it has certainly made me get up and move about more. Could it be better? Maybe, but given the form factor I think Apple did a pretty good job and WatchOS improves with each iteration. I don't think it is necessarily something everyone should have or even want, but there's definitely a market for those of us who can't get away from work as we need to be contactable all the time but just glancing at my watch allows me to know what just came in and react accordingly. Works for me.
I've an MS band (1st gen as can't afford Band 2).
It has some issues, but for me is the fact I can go for a run without have to lug around a bloody great phone.
Also if the phone is in my bag, or shoved somewhere else and I get a text or calls, I can easily see if it's worth bothering with there and then.
Like you, I know it's not for everyone, for an example a friend seems to use his for little more than contactless payments, but he the sort that must have the latest and greatest.
I'm always on the look-out for an excuse to get a gadget. When it came to a smartwatch I couldn't find one.
Step counter? - I actually know if I've done a lot of walking, or not. Knowing how many steps is faddish at best. And if I did want to do that, do I really need a whole Smart?watch for such a trivial purpose? Reading e-mails off my wrist?- Sorry, if an email (or text) is important enough to be read there and then it needs to be read properly, and responded to, not by glancing at it on my wrist and then, what? Shrug/leave the room to respond properly/panic? Checking my diary?- Sorry, I haven't yet reached the stage when I can't remember my schedule for a couple of hours if I check it on my phone before I start a meeting or something.
I got a Garmin Vivoactive about 2 months ago for $85. The best things for me are that the GPS tracks my walks and my commutes on skateboard without the GPS eating the battery on my phone and it gamifys my stats so it encourages me to be more active. It's waterproof to 50 meters, and a battery charge lasts for a week. Without the good battery life, cheap price, and being waterproof, I would not have bought this watch.
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