Omate was one of the first companies (and possibly the very first) to make an untethered smartwatch -- one that had its own SIM card and didn't need a phone to connect to the outside world. The Omate Truesmart represented hard engineering, and most of the rest of the world went the easier route and put the communications intelligence in the phone and not the watch. The company … [Read more...]
Timex Announces ONE GPS Smartwatch
Timex, the brand a lot of people think of when it comes to mass-market watches, is dipping into the smartwatch business, but with a well-defined and limited feature set. The ONE GPS+ watch is a GPS-enabled fitness tracker that can send and receive messages, upload your performance data to a number of tracking sites, and send emergency notifications. What's unusual is that the … [Read more...]
Android Wear Opens the Door for the Luxury Watch Market
Like you all, we've been digesting the wearables news that came out of Google I/O last week, and puzzling a bit over its paucity. There was very little about Glass, which may or may not indicate that it's no longer a development project but may be about to be a project. (Remember, I/O is a developers' conference.) And we were kind of surprised about the muted reception for … [Read more...]
TechCrunch Says Basis is Selling to Intel. We Have Our Doubts. (Update)
Late last night, TechCrunch posted a story saying that Basis -- the heart monitor wristwear company -- was selling itself to Intel for $100 million. We suspect that the reality is a bit more complicated. At Mobile World Congress last week, we heard and spoke to a bunch of high-ranking Intel execs. We had the opportunity to ask Intel president Renee James about upcoming Intel … [Read more...]
CES: Pebble Watch Upgrades to Metal
Pebble, the pioneering smart watch, moved modestly upmarket at CES, debuting watches made of stainless steel, with metal and leather watchbands. The Pebble Steel will run the same apps (and the company officially announced the app store we wrote about a couple of weeks ago). Other than the metal housing, the main differences are the use of Gorilla Glass and the inclusion of a … [Read more...]
Pebble App Store Gets Ready to Launch
The Pebble watch is a nice hack and an unobtrusive totem of coolness, but it's been a little hard to justify the cost. Other than displaying interesting watch faces and telling you when you've got emails or phone calls, the Pebble doesn't really do much. That looks like it will change early in 2014. Pebble has announced the opening of its appstore. The appstore will give … [Read more...]
Qualcomm Toq Smartwatch Goes on Sale December 2
Every so often, the chipmaker Qualcomm has a brain freeze and decides it wants to play in the consumer market; it rarely ends well. The latest is a smartwatch that's going on sale in a couple of weeks. The thing is, it sounds like it might be pretty interesting. One way the Toq watch is different is that its wearers don't need two hands to tell the time; the screen is always … [Read more...]