The first electronic gadget that I fell in love with was a watch. I still remember it like yesterday the moment the watch, a gift from my Uncle, was given to me.It was a basic CASIO watch. Waterproof, with an alarm , stopwatch and countdown timer. It was the best thing ever. I couldn't take it off and couldn't help hoping that some one would notice and ask about the hourly beep that went off on the watch.
Nowadays watches have become just jewelry . With so many multi-function devices around us , All of which guarantees the feature of being able to show the time, we have no need for a watch. Who needs a single function device to tell us the time when so many devices already do that for us. Right ? But I think we need the watch.
Why ? Well I am not talking about the device that needs 21 crystals ( jewels ) to tell me what is happening right now. But the future of such watches.
We have seen some smart watches introduced recently. My favorite being the pebble. Well, it is not what I term smart, but it definitely an improvement over the basic watch we are used to. The others such as Sony have smart watches that can play music, allow you to read messages and email and answer calls. Neat huh !! Well it depends.
I call such watches dumb terminals, because that's what they are. They are terminals to access your smart phone. It is no different than your hands free that takes voice commands. This is just another way to interact with your smart phone , through a smaller screen and lesser touch area. In other words the smart watch is just a digital watch without an accompanying smart phone.
What I look forward to is a true smart watch. Some where along the way we lost it. Lets go back in time. Does any one remember Giant robot ? Johnny Sokko could say commands into his phone and Voila we have a robot shooting missiles out of its fingertips. OK, I know a robot minion is too much to ask for, but still totally awesome.
The point is a watch was a effective communication device . A handy device ( pun intended ). The concept of a watch or watch like device that is used a communicator has been a well established one in science fiction. Damn it, even power rangers have one. The alien in predators was envisioned to be advanced enough to control space ships, vision sensors ( way more advanced than google glass) , gun turrets and packs a punch with a self destruct bomb. Although the interface seems to be a version of alien Symbian OS, it definitely was envisioned as a device to do many things. But still all we see is dumb watches called smart watches. Why can't we take cue from science fiction for ideas on this.
The small screen is practically useless for touch screen usage and to display anything worthwhile. They are useless with out the accompanying smartphone since they don’t have connectivity of their own. How difficult would it be to put a SIM on one of those watches ? Of course the problems such as device heating up, and radiation would have to addressed since the device would always in touch with the body.
Why haven't we seen a true smart watch yet ? The voice commands technology and the Artificial Intelligence behind it has improved so much that we could forego touch or use it as a secondary way to provide input. Imagine Google glass like device sans the squint eye possibility, that you can speak to instead of fiddle around. When you are using the Smart watch, it should feel as capable as your smart phone just that your palms are facing the other way. May be a smart glass makes more sense than a watch since Voice over and Voice out is also taken care.
There are rumors about Google, Apple and Microsoft working on a smart watch. What would you expect out of a smart watch. Can it be a efficient device now that hand held devices can do so much more? If it is just another extension to your smart phones then I would be very disappointed. We will have to wait and "watch".
