The smartwatch industry is, to be frank, not something I'm entirely sold on. There's definitely a market; the enormously successful Pebble demonstrated that a while back. The question is how big that market is. Sony, at least, is convinced the smartwatch market will be huge, so much so that it's got two watches on the horizon.
Smartband Talk
First up is the Smartband Talk, or, essentially, a Fitbit with a phone crammed into it. The band has a microphone and speaker in it so you can take phone calls and, in a nice touch, use your voice to note specific logs and bookmarks. Taking a cue from the Pebble, it uses an epaper display, and it tracks your movements using both an accelerometer and altimeter, so you can get accurate, precise lifelogging.
Smartwatch 3
The SmartWatch 3, on the other hand, is a far more fully featured experience. Using Android Wear as a starting point, it's entirely about the full features, ranging from the usual taking calls and reading texts to using apps and pushing notifications. Probably the most interesting feature, though, is the fact that it's got 4GB of local, on-board memory, which will essentially allow you to listen to playlists, maybe install one or two apps directly, and generally makes the Android smart watch something a lot more logical, and useful than it otherwise would be.
Who Watches The Watch?
The main question really comes down to, well, who specifically is going to pick these up. The smart watch is still a market struggling with finding the right customers. Still, they're highly impressive pieces of technology, and it seems likely they'll find some form of market, whether among geeks or among the fitness obsessed. And, even if they don't rival the iPod in form, isn't it nice to know you've got them out there?
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