Now THIS is a good Smartwatch concept!

[Kaido]

http://imgur.com/gallery/9afxv

I'd buy it.

 

[dighn]

coming up with these cool concepts is easy. turning them into reality is hard.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Yeah, the first thing I thought looking at that is "where would a large enough capacity battery fit into this?"

 

[Belegost]

The edge to edge round LCD/OLED would be quite expensive to manufacture.

As Chrono mentions, this hardly looks large enough to hold a sufficiently large battery.

The rather small elements suggest that this is not a touchscreen, so the only interaction would be through the few small watch buttons on the side - this sounds like a great way to go back to digging through the tiny paper manual to figure out that "switch to email notification" is long hold button A, and tap button C twice.

It's pretty - and pretty impractical.

 

[Muadib]

But can they do it for under $600?

 

[Roland00Address]

Why make the screen round? Nostalgia? A round screen waste space and would be more expensive to manufacture.

 

[crashtech]

Yeah, battery tech is the holdup. I was reading about flexible components, now if part of the battery could be built into the strap we might get somewhere.

 

[Bateluer]

Meh.

 

[crashtech]

No, really, I HATE having a phone in my pocket. When this sort of thing gets doable, I am so there. What would be even cooler is if they could adapt an auto-winder from a mechanical watch to help keep it charged.

 

[RossMAN]

Assuming this smartwatch existed and were mass produced, what's the most you'd pay for it?

Of course it would ultimately depend on the manufacturer and specs (like OS, battery life, etc.).

 

[Mopetar]

coming up with these cool concepts is easy. turning them into reality is hard.

I think this a big problem with all smart watches. With all of the different features and functionality that people want out of them, it becomes increasing difficult to pack it all into a small form-factor and still maintain a decent battery life.

 

[gorcorps]

coming up with these cool concepts is easy. turning them into reality is hard.

Pretty much. You can photoshop a screen onto any watch face you want, but when it's something currently not feasible it doesn't really matter. Does anybody really think that companies haven't already thought of something in the OP?

 

[Kaido]

Assuming this smartwatch existed and were mass produced, what's the most you'd pay for it?

Of course it would ultimately depend on the manufacturer and specs (like OS, battery life, etc.).

Ooh, that's a good question. I think $299 would be the most I'd be willing to pay. It'd need to have great battery life, a Bluetooth speakerphone, an extremely clear (OLED?) screen, the ability to Spritz (like for reading email & text messages), and...I guess that's about it. I don't see smartwatches as having being hugely useful outside of convenient notifications. Spritz is kind of a killer app though...

 

[luv2liv]

might as well just strap your existing smartphone to your wrist.
im sure there has to be a case/strap out there already.


ahh, i found it! only iphones for now though. http://smartphonestraps.com/

 

[lothar]

Assuming this smartwatch existed and were mass produced, what's the most you'd pay for it?

Of course it would ultimately depend on the manufacturer and specs (like OS, battery life, etc.).

$0.
I haven't worn a watch in years. A Smartwatch wouldn't change that.

 

[crashtech]

Seems to me part of the reason watches don't get worn now is that cell phones (and before them, pagers) act as timepieces and make watches redundant.

I'd love to see something like this become a reality someday.

 

[sm625]

If the watch is tethered to a smartphone then it doesnt need a large battery. All it needs is a very low power ARM device, something with just enough power to display data generated by the phone. The bluetooth would use more power than anything. But until they are able to generate enough power to run even the smallest microcontroller, its not going to have much of a market. The hassle of having to take the thing off, and then plug it in to charge sounds very annoying. And the idea of plugging it in without taking it off is also annoying. The device needs to be able to run entirely off of the human body.