Have you ever used one for an extended time?
I don't need to waste my time and money on one to realize it would be a waste of my time and money.
They have no features useful to me that my phone doesn't have already. Will the "smartwatch" hardware magically morph into a super-powered, super-intuitive useful killer device better than my phone if I wear it for a month or two?
Has anyone here experimented with smart watches yet? What's your take? Do these already have the potential to significantly improve quality of life (or at least technological convenience) or are they still in an infantile stage best suited for fanatical early adopters?
What's your take on the current market for smart watches?
Just for the record I'm not asking about your opinion on the validity of smartwatches overall.
Contradiction much?
Question for all: What do you think about Rufus Cuff? I know it's huge but the design looks wearable and the functionality of a similar device could fully replace smartphones within a year or two at the going rate of technological advancement.
If I wanted to strap a smartphone on my wrist I'd... OMG...
strap my smartphone on my wrist!
Why would one want to get an entirely separate device to perform redundant functions that a phone already does?
In fact I
do have an armband for my phone which I use on the rare occasion I go for a jog. It looks a bit silly (though I don't really care, exercise clothes are already stupid-looking IMO), is awkward to wear with some clothes, and is awkward to have just one hand to operate it.
If I were one of those fitness people, then i'd buy one of those fitness armbands that are specialized for those tasks and perform far better than any phone. But I'm a lazy bastard, so no.
People thought I was crazy spending my hard earned money on that stuff for years but now we all do it.
Except we didn't spend our hard-earned money on half-baked barely-usable devices for
years?
I'm amazed by the strength of the opinions of the nay-sayers on this topic.
Oh yes, do handwave away our criticism by labeling it
opinion. What did you expect, a research paper? Uncritical adoration? Cry me a river.
It confounds and vexes me when people make threads and after getting one or two criticisms they whine that other people have the gall to disagree with them, or give answers to the questions they made.
I'm amazed by the strength of the
opinions of the yay-sayers on this topic. It's not the "next big thing". It's redundant. It's trendy. It's niche. The smartphone will reign supreme until it's replaced and/or integrated into truly useful and game-changing tech like AR glasses. Why? See below.
Not to assume you're all wrong, but how can you assume you're right about a technology in its infancy?
A) Smartwatches are not a "technology". It's a device typology that integrates a variety of technologies. I think "form factor" is the word used for electronic gadgets. These same technologies are also found in other form factors (see
smartphones).
B) Form follows function.
Q: Why was the ipod the first massively popular digital music player when other players had been in the market for
years?
A: ease of organizing / loading music into it; simple, effective interface both in software as well as hardware (clickwheel).
Q: Why was the iphone the first massively popular smartphone/PDA when there had been other devices by RIM, Nokia, Sony-ericsson and Palm in the market for
years?
A: ease of accessing functions and loading music into it; simple, effective interface both in software as hardware (dump tiny buttons and tiny screen in favor of large, super responsive capacitive touchscreen).
Q: Why did netbooks / ultraportables flop?
(If you think this is controversial then you're delusional).
A: underpowered, awkwardly small screens and awkwardly small keyboards, with OS designed for desktops. They were promptly dumped for tablets for the exact same reason the iphone became smartphone king.
Q: Why aren't phones and laptops becoming smaller anymore even if all their components are getting smaller and better?
A: The device typology has reached a usability optima. Our hands aren't getting smaller and our eyes aren't becoming microscopes. Making them any smaller makes them less useful, not more. With weight loss associated with miniaturization and price drop of scaling technologies there was even a bounce to larger phones and laptops (even to ridiculously inconvenient large sizes) because in the touch-screen interface paradigm less is certainly not more.
Q: Why aren't smartwatches going to replace smartphones?
A: Outside niche uses for the small-screen, low power variety, there's not much to gain from putting a device of that capacity in your wrist as opposed to handheld, while you do lose the ability to handle it with either hand, or both, and to give it to other people. One handed typing
sucks, and typing is absolutely fundamental for most of the common and useful smartphone functions like texting, e-mail, notes, social media, and general internet browsing. Until someone invents an input method that's faster and more intuitive than typing (say, BCI...), keyboards are going to continue to constrain device forms. (Voice commands, while they are now technically feasible, are apparently just weird for the majority of the population. Most people don't like talking to tools, and certainly don't like everyone else knowing the content of their messages). Combined with the media consumption / interface usefulness of a decent-sized screen, the phone-size touchscreen paradigm is staying for a while.
Question: So, tell us all-knowing Kuu, what's the future?
Answer: Flexible screens/electronics will actually make smartphones kill this silly smartwatch trend, making one capable of bending the phone into an armband, and easily removing it, thus getting the best of both worlds (
revolutionary, they'll say!). The more convenient and powerful device will swallow the less convenient, underpowered one, and certainly not the other way around! I sure as hell hope the rumored iwatch is actually a flexible iphone, because that's the only thing that makes any sense, murdering both smartwatches and other smartphone competition in a single glorious integrated interface-design-hard-software climax that only Apple can deliver—but I digress...
Slightly further into the future, these devices, if there is a deity in this universe (unlikely), will be renamed to something more sensible like communicators, wearables, or just mobiles, since nobody my generation and down actually phones more than texts, and smartX is just dumb. Regardless of that, they will gain actually useful new features due to integrating more hardware like
myoelectric sensors, turning them into personal, universal, intuitive controls for
all other wireless devices.
A bit later than that, AR glasses will begin to replace most uses for these large mobile touchscreens (and a bunch of screens on other devices too), though these glasses would probably still be dependent accessories tethered to the main mobile device due to other conveniences of the handheld/wrist form, particularly more battery/processor space (because nobody wants to wear clunky stuff on their face except for that
EyeTap guy) and text input (unless
subvocal-recognition technology or some other non-invasive BCI is sufficiently developed by the time AR glasses go mainstream). Unlike silly smartwatches, however, AR glasses are actually a giant paradigm shift in computing interface with a myriad of killer apps, and will therefore sell like pancakes when the tech is mature.
