Time for Smartwatches Part 2

earlier episode where we have part one. And now we're going to really focus on the evolution of the smart watch. When we started seeing connectivity right right, Yeah, we we we We've come up through the history of how talks and watches happened a little bit and um, and now we're getting ready to talk about what we would start considering smart. Yeah, let's get to it smart. We pretty much covered like these digital watches that have interesting additional

features to them. Again, I don't know that we would call any of them smart. You might argue that being able to program your watch doing some some basic programming makes it sort of a smart watch because it does go beyond the level of telling time. It could technically do whatever memory could hold and whatever you could program. To be fair, do not know how much memory that that first uh you see two thousand hadn't right, and

probably not very much. But we've covered the basic kinds of watches, digital watches, the sort of stuff they could do. Once we began to figure out, hey, you know, there there are other things that transistors can do besides just have us tell time. Let's figure out these other options we might be able to give people. When we hit nine, that's when time X comes out with a watch that actually has some connectivity features in it, and they use a really weird implementation to do it. Yeah. They it

had an optical sensor on to watch his face. Yeah, this is the data link one fifty. And it was the first watch that allowed you to transfer information from a PC to the watch. So let's say that you want to use the watch to keep track of your contacts. You're essentially using it sort of like a very primitive pa uh. And so what you do is you would go on the PC. You would use some proprietary software that came with the watch. So this is something that

you would install on your computer. It's not something that's on the watch. Itself. You type out whatever it is you want to store on the watch, and then when you were ready to transfer the information, it would transmit that through a series of flashes on your monitor and you would hold you'd physically hold the watch up so that it was next to your monitor so it could catch that flashing information and that would be translated into

whatever it was you had tight. So it was kind of like, you know, the old semaphore approach to communication, except in this case you're talking about it's all digital once it goes through the flashes of light. Um, it was very tiny lighthouse. Yeah, it was. It was pretty cool idea in the sense that you know, you didn't

have to have any cables or anything you or technology. Now, I imagine that if there were any like I can, I can easily imagine that there were probably issues with this watch whenever you had certain lighting situations like if you're if you're if your desk or office was lit in a certain way, it might not transmit the information accurately, that kind of thing. But it still was an interesting approach to fixing this. I wonder how long it took to transmit information, Like if you were to type a

particularly long list. Like let's say that you were hitting the capacity for what the watch could hold. I wonder how long it would take to transmit. I honestly don't have the information, but it does make me curious if you had to hold the watch up for like a half hour while your mondor just flashes seemingly at random at you. Yeah. That also, Um, we started getting into some infrared technology in transferring data between two watches. This

was the Cassio Infraceptor. It was it was a gaming watch that you could you could use this little infrared gidget to uh to play a little multiplayer games with someone else who had the same right, So you have

two people And this is not unusual. We've seen lots of proprietary approaches to h to mobile gaming window does this very similar thing where you're using not necessarily infrared, you're using radio waves in that case, but in this in this case, it's it's infrared uh waves kind of like kind of like what you would have with a remote control, and uh, it wasn't that's you know, very innovative approach, especially for sure. Yeah, certainly, I'm I don't

think that. In our Digital Pets episode, I don't think that, um, that those started happening until almost a decade later. It was a little bit later. Yeah, in two thousand one, IBM hit the scene with the watch pad. This was a Linux based watch. So this this watch has its own little operating system. It was a stripped down version of Linux, and it had a q v G A l c D screen. Uh. It included Bluetooth and an

accelerometer in it. UM. So it had a lot of the basic features that we think of and some of the more advanced smart watches that we're starting to see hit the market today. It did have a slight disadvantage, uh, with all of this equipment. Um, it was a little power hungry and not in the Doctor Evil I'm going to Conquer the world kind of worry, but rather a battery lasted about two hours, which is when you have a time piece and you need to know what time

it is, which problematic. I feel like that's about average for for maybe the p d a's of the time. Yeah, because well, I mean, you know, you wouldn't be normally, you wouldn't be operating a p d A consistently for two hours, but of a watch, you might, you know, very well, be required to use it quite a few times. So if it only lasts a couple of hours, I guess you could tell time by how frequently you had to charge it. Uh, not terribly useful. Yeah, yeah, that's

that's much much like the quartz mechanism. That's that's a really really accurate not not not necessarily the way you want to tell time, but but it works. Um. As of two thousand two, Cassio came out with a wrist camera that that that was that was the name of the watch. It was the wrist Camera um And and this had a fancy fancy pixels square pixels. Yeah, that's how that's the resolution you could get on this thing.

And it was not in colors gray scale. Yeah, so you you could take very primitive photos with this risk cameras, but like a proof of concept. Sure sure, but yeah, you know, telling time and taking pictures. Yeah, simultaneously. It was. It was also the same year that the Fossil wrist PDA came out, and it came out in two different versions. There was one that's that supported the Palm operating system and there was one that supported pocket piece see, which

was Microsoft's mobile mobile approach. Yes, It had a hundred and ninety kites of memory that could store up to around well over one more than I should say, more than one thousand contacts or around three fifty memos, depending upon what else you wanted to put in there. You know, you could have some combination thereof but that's about the

the full extent of its storage capabilities. Uh. Moving up to two thousand five five was the first eat inc watch that was again by Saco now eat Inc. One of the reasons why e ink is so attractive to electronics manufacturers is that it has a very low power consumption rate. It only consumes power whenever it has to change the display. So if you have a display that's not changing frequently, then et inc ends up saving you

a lot of a lot of power. So let's say that you know, there's no second indicator on the watch. If it only indicated once a minute, then then it's not so bad. It can actually the battery can last a very long time. It's much more efficient than l c D display, even l E ED display. I mean, you know, depending of course on how the ink is lit, because if it's got a backlight going all the time, then that that will that will drain power. So a lot of eating displays don't have any backlighting at all.

They might have light that will come in from the side to eliminate the screen. If it's because you know, clearly you want to have a watch that's going to be able to work even if you are in the dark, right you can't. I need to know what time it is even when there are no lights on. Yeah, and and a lot of a lot of these early early watches we should we should say also did include um, you know what, would only have the backlight turn on if you press a button to But it wasn't like

it was because yes. In two thousand and six, Microsoft introduced the SPOT, which stands for Smart Personal Objects Technology UH. It was a smart watch that was meant to auto adjust to time zones by using FM radio signals. It would actually receive radio signals to determine where you were and UH and these these radio signals would have within it whatever the local time was, so it would automatically

adjust to the local time zone. And it could also display information like traffic warnings or even things like messages from your outlook email. But it had a fairly small screen and the battery life was very limited, so they weren't seen as being terribly useful. By two thousand eight, Microsoft had shuttered the program, so it only lasted for about two years, but it was one of those early

attempts by Microsoft to enter the smart watch space. In two thousand seven, sony Ericson introduced the mb W one fifty, which paired with other sony Ericson products, specifically sony Ericson phones um via bluetooth. It could display a single line of text. So this is a This was a watch that if you looked at it wasn't a digital watch. It actually had watch hands and it had a watch face.

But there was a little blank, tiny screen that could display one line of text, and that one live text could be something like if you had an incoming phone call, it would tell you the name of the person who was calling you, or it could give you an other alerts uh. And it also could vibrate. It had a little motor inside it that would allow it to vibrate whenever you've got a call. So that way like I missed calls all the time because as the I T crowd would say, my vibrate sit it's a little weedy.

So I don't tend to notice when my phone is vibrating. Um. But if I, you know, had a watch that would vibrate, then I would either think I was having a heart attack or that I was actually getting a phone call. And maybe once I realized I was getting a phone call, I would then have a heart attack because no one calls me. I'm so lonely, so um, then I think

I have a note. In two thousand nine, two thousand nine, that's when Samsung came out with the S nine one ten That was a watch that was also a phone. Now it's not the only watch phone that came out that year, but it was a one point seven six inch touchscreen phone watch. It used Bluetooth, it could connect with other devices, it could get email, and it could do MP three playback at forty megabytes of internal memory.

And uh, the other watch phone that came out that year, or that debut that year cut the attention of c E S the former Consumer Electronic Showcase. Now it's our show. Now it's just CE. But in two thousand nine, I attended that year and I remember seeing this in person. I was not allowed to touch it at the time. Only LG representatives were allowed to wear it. It was the l G watch phone also known as the lg

G d N and uh. It was one of those darlings of the show Flour along with the Palm pre So don't get too attached to stuff at ces is the moral of this tale. It's sold in other parts of the world, in Europe and in Asia, but never came to the United States. But it was actually a phone just like the Samsung one was. They had a cellular chip inside it that would allow you to make phone calls and it would work on cellular networks, So it's not something that you would pair with another device, um,

which was an interesting approach it was. You know, again, it never came to the US, so we can never really test it out. I imagine that the battery life on this was probably pretty limited to UM and I imagined also that a lot of devices go now with pairing with a smartphone as opposed to having all this technology crammed into it in order to avoid things like

battery life that only last a few hours. Right sure. Also, you know, just the advancements in say Bluetooth are such that it makes it makes it a lot easier these days to you know four point now is much more energy efficient than earlier versions of Bluetooth. That is a

good point. And also the the other thing that the watchphone had was voice recognition capabilities, So in this case it actually did have the capacity to take voice commands, which interesting again and just as you would expect when I saw this at CEES. What was the example everyone gave Dick Tracy? Exactly right, Dick Tracy. Everyone's like, yes, Tracy, wrist watch and uh and I'm thinking, like, how many more years are we going to have? While that's still

a valu valid reference. When I think of of voice commands to a watch, I think of, um, Glitch from from that show Reboot Reboot, thank You, which which I don't think. I think you still haven't watched. But but I'm not going to insult Glitch by calling him a watch because that would be a terrible, terrible thing to do. I'll take your word for it. Moving on in that was the year that iPod sixth generation Nano came out

and it became this phenomenon of watch use. It's at first, um there, you know, you could pull up a clock face on it, but it wasn't really a function that had been in pended for but a couple of third party people started putting together these, um these watch bands and cases for it. Watch band is probably the one

that most people are familiar with. Sure, sure, um, you know it's it's And then and then Apple started to realize that people were using this this for this purpose and started updating the firmware with lots of lots of fun stuff to different watch faces and things like that.

You know it was it was one point five inch two forty pixel multi touch display and um, you know it's it seemed really great, Like I I remember a lot of people being so excited about this right up until when they released the seventh generation Nano that was in a vertical format and basically killed it as far as I can tell, strategically on purpose for potential future

development of their own stay tuned. The the sixth generation Nano again, you know, depending on your definition of smart watch might not apply because it was again mostly self contained as MP three player. They could do other stuff besides till the time, but it wasn't it was you could I think that you could sink it to um, well, I mean you could think it to a computer too. Yeah, you could sink it. You could not update remotely like you had to have it sink. So depending upon your definition,

you might not call it a smart watch. I mean, first of all, it wasn't marketed as a smart watch. It was smarketed as an MP three player. But using it as a time piece and an MP three player, uh made a lot of sense. And and in fact, the first time I saw it, that was the first thing I thought was that, gosh, you just put that on a watch band and you've got yourself a uh, you know, essentially essentially a smart watch in my mind, Like I don't. I'm not so strict as to say

that it has to have uh. It has to be completely free of any other material and a refretative counts of smart watch. It has to be self reliant, because a lot of smart watches that I like pair up with another device, you know, without that pairing, they don't have the functionality that you would you know, associate with a smart watch. And and it is certainly easier yes to uh, to to pair something to a to a UM either iOS or Android system or UM you know.

My Microsoft is I think thinking about it is rumored to be thinking about getting into the smart watch game as well. And of course, you know, there are a lot of other companies that are building out devices like watches that that already hook up into existing platforms, both Android and iOS. Uh, and we'll talk about a couple of them in whom that's w I MM had an Android watch that was just meant as a developer kit.

It wasn't a consumer product, um and UH. You know, it was really designed to kind of get Android developers into thinking about designing app specifically for a smart watch form factor. And whom entered into a secret and exclusive partnership with a company that I don't know what the identity is because they never said, but anyway, it's still secret.

The developer kits no longer are available. UH. Is also the year that Sony came out with their first smart watch design YEP and UH and Motorola came out with the Motto Active, which was part smart watch, part athletic activity tracker, so it had the accelerometer. It also had a GPS sensor in it so it could even track your location for those US who aren't so worried about that, um.

But anyway, it also had Bluetooth four point. No I'm not gonna I'm like, there's a whole other podcast that we're gonna do about about privacy and and and being tracked and it doesn't belong here, but anyway, it also could.

It also could connect to other types of sensors. So if you had a sensor attached to your bike, for example, that recorded how far you had traveled through Bluetooth, you could connect your auto Active with that sensor, and the Moto Active would essentially become your window for all things activity related. Um and it also had uh could play MP three's. It could act as a second screen for a phone and give you things like your you know,

color I D or text messages. It could run Android apps, but uh, the functionality was somewhat limited because again Android apps were designed for smartphones and for tablets, not for watches at this point, so trying to use some of them was more trouble than what they were worth. From what I understand, I never actually had a chance to really play with one. I got to play with one briefly at a ce S, but I didn't get a chance to really dive into it. It did have eight

gigabytes of flash memory gigs. Yeah, you know it wasn't that long ago we were talking about kilobytes and now we're into the gigabytes, so we could actually hold as much as uh some MP three players, so it could hold you know, a library's worth of music. Yeah, Yeaheve is also the year that um that the Pebble kickstarter happened.

And this this is a point that that Jonathan as of like today has a little bit of of added bitterness towards because all right, so so so just the gig in case for some reason you did not hear about how Pebble was the smart watch that had a hundred thousand dollar goal earned over ten million. It's the most point two million dollars, the most successful project to date in Kickstarter history, and as of July seven, available in certain best buy stores and and that's and that's

great for Pebble. Um. The problem, the problem is, Jonathan, do you want to take this or do you do not? Do not have the words? Here's the problem. In January, certain unstruggling put in a pre order for cherry red Pebble and he's very much looking forward to wearing this cherry red Pebble everywhere. Phaps on episodes of Forward thinking where the entire world could see him wearing a cherry

red pebble. But Jonathan has not received his cherry red pebble, even though he dreams of it every night, and instead has learned that it will be available and Best Buy, and that he could have walked into a brick and mortar store and bought the pebble, although technically I don't think it was cherry red. I think the cherry red ones won't be available till a little bit later in July.

But anyway, the point that he could have bought a black one, they will only have black ones available at best Buy for now, but it's just assume until they actually fill their pre orders, seeing seeing that they that it was coming to brick and mortar stores before I finally get my Now, let's let's be clear, I was not a Kickstarter backer, so I totally agreed with the company's decision that they wanted to fulfill all backers orders first before going into pre order. I thought that was

the right decision to make. It was the thing that rewarded the people who believed in the company from the very get go. I totally understand that, and then I pre ordered. See when I pre order the pre part. It's red, You're getting a red one. Um. But but okay,

this being said that I was not. I was not really convinced about the Pebble until I went again to see Yes, and there I saw the founder of the company talking about the Pebble, giving a demo of it, explaining what their project was, explaining how they came about it. I got to to take a really close look at them. I was really impressed by the company. I was impressed by the product. And that's when I went and put

in a pre order. And while I'm I'm grousing right now, it's really just out of the desire to have it, I don't. I don't actually have any ill will towards the company. That's mostly played up for laughs. Um so really, if anyone from Pebble was listening, I'm not actually upset. I just eager to get one because But anyway, this

is something that pairs with a smartphone. It pairs with either an Android device or an iOS device right to provide kind of like like push notifications basically for for for for emails, for text messages, for phone calls, um yep. And it uses an e paper display which is a little different from eat ink. It's not, it's not exactly the same thing. Is proprietary and any paper doesn't E paper is again another uh technology that makes it look like it's you know, paper, just like eating displays do.

It doesn't have a backlight unless you press the little and even I don't think it's backlead. I think it's left from the side. It might be backlead, but I'm not active unless you press a button. Uh. So that helps concerned. It does hook up through Bluetooth, and I remember them saying that this would in fact impact the battery life of your smartphone, so UM by about five so you're going to have five to percent less time available on whatever device you have paired to the pebble.

It also will give you notifications, like you were saying, neat neat device, you know, one of those things that was sort of an upstart company and really captured a lot of those interests, obviously from the fact that they raised hell so much a million dollars dollars. Just recently, Eating themselves announced um a flexible at one point seven three inch touch display called the Mobius for future release.

I haven't seen this. That sounds cool. And um and and and and and lots of lots of companies are rumored to be getting into this game. Um, I think now I will say before we get into the rumors, there are a couple that I want to talk about are available right now this year. Yeah, Sony just announced earlier in June. We were recording this the very beginning of July. But in in June they announced that they were coming out with the smart watch too, to arrive

in September. So that's they're they're obviously their successor to their earlier smart watch. And again it's an Android powered smart watch. It also has NFC connectivity near field communication connectivity, so that that sounds like it's got some early buzz behind it, so that sounds pretty cool. Also, the Martian Watches launched the Martian Passport, the Martian Victory, and the Martian G two G smart watches. Uh they have voice controls and they can actually act as a speaker phone.

They pair with a smartphone, but they can act as a speaker phone, and they allow you to use services like Sirie over the watch. Uh s Net did not give a very positive review. It was a three star review out of five, saying that there were some problems with the voice quality that both listening to a speaker phone conversation or trying to interact with Sirie there No Sirie on a good day can be a little taxing depending upon series mood. But apparently Sirie over a speaker

phone gets even. It just has trouble understanding what as you want? Right right? Yeah, whenever any of these microphones don't have um sufficient alority clarity or blocking technology for all the ambient noise. Yeah, this is why I often get stairs whenever I walked down the street and I'm screaming at my wrist. Where do I hide the body? Can't? I can't imagine why that's that's on Peach Tree. I fit right in. Um, that's that's just a little joke

for anyone else who who has been in Atlanta. Al Right, so in our office off of Peach Tree, it turns out. So anyway, we're talking about rumors now, so getting into the rumored smart watches that we have heard about this year but have not yet been unveiled in an official capacity. Uh. Two big companies have smart watches that are rumored to be on the horizon. Yeah. Yeah, Google as of had filed a path for a smart watch looking thing. This

wasn't the first pattern for a smart watch. They have also filed for other ones that kind of had an augmented reality aspect to them. I remember seeing one that even had a little flip up screen, so you would flip like the watch face up so it's vertical on your wrist and then you would gaze through it monocle style at the world around you to get augmented reality data.

But it looks like this since Google Glass is coming out, maybe yeah, yeah, well well this, uh, this, this new patent has um Google glasses, uh touch pads on the sides of the screen. Yeah. In fact, I've seen some speculation that this watch would actually interact with Google Glass, so that you would become another means of controlling Google, so that maybe you're not shouting at yourself, right and I wouldn't be saying Google instead of Google. Yeah. Yeah,

it's been along day, folks. Uh yeah, So that's that's one possibility. And then there's the other big company. Apple has already um filed a patent in Japan, I registered a trademark, right, Yeah, they haven't as far as I know. I mean, there may be patents out there. There probably are patents out there, but it's been registering the trademark

I watch. Not a big surprise, but trademarking the the word I watch in various countries, most recently in Japan, but in other countries as well, which again suggests that the company is looking into developing its own smart watch. This is something that's been rumored for a while. Keep in mind, the iPad was rumored to be a big, big project for about two or three years before it finally came out, So that might mean that it may be another three years before we see an eye watch.

Maybe not, maybe it'll be much you know. Like like I said about about that that I Pod Nana, the six gen I, I really do think that they started counting down from M and saying, you know, we need to stop making them this way because otherwise to them later on in up cannibalizing our our smart watch market if we keep selling something that's uh slightly less capable and perhaps less expensive electronic device. Yeah, that one, um,

I've I've I've heard I've heard rumors. I've read rumors that added Samsung is thinking about it a Galaxy smart watch to go along with their their Galaxy Note and Galaxy smartphone lines. So yeah, I mean we're just getting into it now, and I think really it's the wearable computer aspect that's that's getting to a level of sophistication.

And the innovation around how you you use the user interface has really helped it a lot, because touch touch screens are so important for this, because even voice controls and and maybe we'll get to just your controls. Like I can imagine having a watch that has uh the kind of accelerometers in it so that it only displays the time when you hold your arm up as if you're looking at the watch, because then it could end up, say,

being a lot of energy whenever you're not doing that. Although, to be fair, depending upon how some of us look at our watches, that might just be frustrating because we might be like I could totally see what time it was right now if my watch were lit up, but that would be that that would be pretty cool if you could, if you could direct your your watch by

making increasingly ridiculous gestures. I would be glad to give someone a broken watch and tell them that's how it worked, just to see, like what kind of crazy muppet moves. We would get out of that note to self. Something to do with Josh. We we do, by the way, we we we got it. We got a reader letter in and and I I want to say real quick that that we love all of our fellow podcasts. We

honestly have zero animosity towards any of them. We like giving everyone grief on air, but because they're so agreevable and trust us, trust us. If you were to to see the interactions that happened within our office, you would realize this is all that kind of you know, one upsmanship that's come completely meant ingest. But none of us really intend any others uh any ill will except for me against Josh. But apart from that, he's I'm still kidding mostly Pebble, send me my watch. Um, yeah, no,

it's just because I'm hurt. That's all all right? Well, I think that kind of wraps up this discussion. Lauren. Let me ask you this. You don't do you normally wear a watch? I do not, Okay, I also do not normally wear a watch. Is there is there a smart watch out there, a design you've seen that you've actually liked or do you just not? Is that just not something for you. I've been I've been thinking about getting a watch actually because I they look cool. Yeah, um,

that's the same thing. I've been thinking, like, I've got a phone that tells me what time it is, and I've always got my phone on it, right, But at the same time, I think I kind of want a fashion accessory. And that's really what how watches started off. When you think about it, I think for me it would take, um, it would take one of these devices being it's exty enough, it's it's having that fashionable appeal of and and and some of the fitness trackers are

starting to get really really cool looking. Um, and I think it would take a device, um, you know, look looking like like like the Misfit Shine for example. You know, like like just something very sleep So you want you're you want the aesthetic to be just right. Like for me, a little bit kind of clunky and geeky works for me because let's face it, I'm clunky and geeky, So I think it works well. But I've actually got three different smart watches pre ordered and I haven't received any

of them yet. Actually technically one is not a smart watch. One of them is just a super cool watch design, which I'll show you after the episodes over. But it's uh, it's not a smart watch because it really just tells the time. It doesn't have any other extra functionality to it anyway. Uh Yeah, I see this as being a market that's just going to continue to get more and more competitive, especially when we start to see ing uh flexible screens, you know, more like eat ink displays that

are flexible that kind of stuff. Um, or we see uh flexible oh led displays come down in price, and that's gonna be a while obviously, But once we start seeing that, then you're gonna see the form factor for watches just go crazy because it can be molded to any shape at that point. And while we are used to watch as looking a certain way, there's no guarantee that that's how they're going to look ten years from that. And if they get more comfortable and more a wearable,

then that's obviously. I can't wait for them to look like like arm bracers. You know, it's over your whole forearm and can give you a full read out of everything. And dude, I would buy one in heartbeat. I'm not even joking. I would buy those all right, Well, that wraps up this episode of tech Stuff. Guys. If you

have any suggestions for future topics, let us know. You can write us our email addresses tech stuff at Discovery dot com or drops Lan on social are handle at both Facebook and the Twitter is tech stuff, H. S W and Lauren and I will talk to you again. Relation, but more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com