Somehow, we thought this has been reported before, but we’re apparently mistaken. The Intel/Opening Ceremony fashion cuff MICA will go on sale in early December and cost $495, including two years of data from AT&T. The cuff, designed and built as a fashion-oriented item, is a standalone notification device that doesn’t require tethering to a smartphone.
The pricing is particularly interesting. AT&T typically charges $10/month to add a device to a shared data plan. Two years of that would cost $240 — a significant part of the MICA’s price. And the MICA, which we had our hands on the other night, is a solid piece of tech. It has a curved sapphire screen, a nice clasp, and generally feels like a piece of jewelry and not a cheap smartwatch.
The MICA is designed to display over-the-air notifications from sources such as Gmail or Facebook and filter them by priority; depending on the message, it can either display it or simply vibrate.
It goes on sale early next month at select Opening Ceremony boutiques, select Barney’s New York stores, and online at OpeningCeremony.us and barney’s.com.