Caller ID Watches 239
kbielefe writes "On Thursday, Sony Ericsson and Fossil Inc. announced a line of bluetooth watches that vibrate when a call comes in on your cell phone, display the number of the caller, and allow you to press a button to send the call to voicemail. No more digging around in your pocket or purse before deciding if the call is important enough to interrupt a meeting."
Battery life (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Recharge through USB or universal AC adapter"
Sorry, I don't want to have to think about charging my watch. I expect to be able to keep it on my wrist a couple of months, at least.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Battery life (Score:4, Insightful)
You keep saying that long enough and you won't be able to get any sleep between all the plugging and unplugging you will be doing.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I also tend to chat for at least an hour a day on it and like to play Sudoku while my life is was
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. I am also bad at remembering to charge my 'phone. The only gadget I charge sensibly is my iPod, because putting it in its dock outputs sound through my hi-fi, and so there is an added incentive to charge it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Battery life (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
might be an interesting way to do electronic tagging of criminals, need a bluetooth gps watch which reports location via mobile phone to police.
Re:Battery life (Score:4, Insightful)
The very target market for this type of thing is probably the market that's abandoning the use of watches. Especially that thing. I heard of a poll last week that said that the "young adult" market generally isn't using watches to tell time anymore. The only upside is that they will get watches as a fashion accessory. I really don't think that Fossil qualifies. If it looked fashionable, metal with decent gold or silver plating, then maybe it would have had a better chance.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe not for people that want a status symbol, but if you want a reliable watch that looks like a real watch, is durable, and doesn't require a second mortgage for tank metal, fossil definitely works.
People claim that prices are going up on everything and go into debt for things that have little improvement for the value. My brother's 2000 dollar movado doesn't really look 1980 dollars better than my fossil (I actually only paid 16 dollars cuz I worked at a de
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
They can't afford to license the patent that Dick Tracy has on that.
landline as well (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:landline as well (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A landline is a phone connected into the POTS network via a physical cable and receives power from a central distribution point allowing it to survive power outages (assuming the upstream provider has a generator or UPS built into the terminals). It usually allows unmetered calling to anyone in your local area and allows you to receive calls from anywhere without paying fees.
Here's what the Fossil looks like (Score:5, Informative)
BUTT UGLY (Score:3, Insightful)
You'd think Fossil could come up with better looking packaging than that, especially given the launch of this new technology.
Re: (Score:2)
Gotta agree with you. Never heard of fossil til I followed the link. They seem to have tons of really nice watches (and I don't wear a watch ;-) that I could see.
:-P
That looks like a really ugly 80's digital watch.
Now, I'm off to look more closely at their website. I can live without the caller ID, but the watch company suddenly interests me.
Cheers
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
My Fossil watch bought in 2000 is still going strong despite quite a rough life, including some very intensive mountain biking and military training school and service.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Here's what the Fossil looks like (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Destined to be obsolete (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Destined to be obsolete - Twice! (Score:3, Funny)
And those will be obsolete in two years, when they introduce the wrist-mounted video phone.
Just think -- we'll finally catch up with Dick Tracy!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because the kind of screen a PDA or media player needs is completely different from the kind of screen that's sufficient for a watch or phone. Personally, I think a cellphone watch would be a great idea, as long as it was only the tranceiver, a 2-line LCD, a mechanism for inputting phone numbers, and a bluetooth chip (for the headset). Any fancier functionality (e.g. calender, file storage, media, etc.) belongs
Re: (Score:2)
So this means, no headset. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I have come across lots of devices that can only pair with one phone, though.
Re: (Score:2)
Where is my Dick Tracy Phone? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm very puzzled....
Do you SIT on your cell phone when you take a call?
Or do you prefer hands-free?
I'm torn between... (Score:5, Funny)
b) How lazy I have become to think that this it would be nice to not have to reach into my pocket to see who's calling
DAMN YOU, TECHNOLOGY!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
On a related note... what's with voice mail and answering machines kicking in at four rings? I can't seem to set mine to six. If I'm, say, at home washing dishes in the kitchen when the phone rings, I am not quick enough to rinse and dry my hands and sprint to the next room, even a mere dozen feet or so, and get the phone in time. I remember a time before the ubiquitous answering machine. My mother told me to not give up and hang up until eight rings had passed when calling someone. Now with cell phone
Re: (Score:2)
One bonus - they have integrated voicemail. Now when I first signed up, I was thinking of putting up my own Asterisk box etc. but I haven't gotten around to that. I was overjoyed to find that their integrated voicemail allows you to change the # of rings until pick-up to 6!!!
Man, that's nice. If I could only get my cell # to do the same.... I find sometimes that the delay be
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Kinda cool, but just Sony Ericsson ?? (Score:4, Insightful)
The watches themselves look ok, and I like the idea of having caller ID on my wrist and not having to fuss with the phone... but only supporting Sony/Ericsson phones? I won't buy Sony shit, and I Ericsson phones are notorious pieces of shit.
It's BLUETOOTH for gods sake... it's an open standard. Why won't it support generic Bluetooth phones?
Screw that... I'll buy from another company that actually has support for some of the more common phones out there. I can't think of anyone with an Ericsson phone off the top of my head.
Re: (Score:2)
BlueTooth is only a hardware spec+protocol? (Score:2)
I.e. you could set up a LAN using BlueTooth if you were really bored, you can stream your phone's audio to a bluetooth headset if you want, you can use BlueTooth to let your carkit work without a wired hookup (Even if that's stupid)... but these are only things you -can- do, and aren't things that are specifically part of the BlueTooth standard?
I guess there might be something of a standard related to broadcasting incoming call d
But... (Score:2, Funny)
My Grandfather the watchmaker... (Score:5, Insightful)
We sat down at the kitchen table and as my dad leaned over to show my grandfather the watch, he pushed the button and the time displayed. My grandfather never one to show much emotion shook his head and looked at my dad.
He said, "I dont understand, how can they call that progress when NOW it takes 2 hands to tell time ?" as he show a quick glance at his favorite self winding chronograph.
My dads bubble was visibly burst, I never saw him wear the watch again, it sits still in his jewelry box.....
I LOVE the Idea of the Caller ID Watch as I have refused to carry a cell until about 4 months ago , it drives me nuts and spends most of its time in the car, but I could live with something like this.....BUT PLEASE OMIT THe function requireing me to PRESS A GODDAM BUTTON !
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Um ... so ... you don't push the button to send the call to voicemail. So your watch buzzes for a while and ... the call goes to voicemail. Happy now? Wait -- even better. With your method, you don't even need to buy the watch.
Re: (Score:2)
Phone in car....
7k Rol on my wrist......yeah well stick with that one....
Re: (Score:2)
One word: why? (Score:2)
Sure, if it had just been like my regular watch I'd probably have loved it. But this? No thanks.
cool, but too pricey and limited (Score:2)
Bad idea... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Probably equally pissed as he would have been that you were checking your phone, since it would imply that the callers were more important than he was.
yeah. (Score:2)
I would buy one...except... (Score:3, Insightful)
Grr. Just do it right the first time (Score:2)
I have a bluetooth-enabled earbud.
I can tap the earbud and have it recognize "Call Home" and call home.
I can't have the earbud discretely tell me the caller id info of an incoming call, with the phone set to vibrate.
WHY THE FS*K NOT!?
For that matter, why does the phone not recognize the immensely useful, "say time" verbal command?
Re: (Score:2)
I have a Motorola E815.
what is this watch device you speak of? (Score:2)
I'm not familiar with this 'watch' technology. Reading these posts, it sounds like some new apparatus which tells time. That doesn't sound like anything I need. My cellphone tells the time just perfectly.
Oh, now I get it. The thing is worn on the writst so I don't have to fumble in my pocket everytime I want to see what time it is. Now that's a breakthrough!
Seth
problem... (Score:2)
So instead of looking at their watch to see who is on the phone, they look at their cellphone to see what time it is.
And Bluetooth is good on batteries, but no so good that I want a device with a tiny, non-rechargable battery to do Bluetooth. You'll be opening your watch weekly.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, I also consider non-digital watches to be utterly worthless other than as pretty museum pieces. The art and history are nice, but as a useful tool, I just don't get it.
I'll skip mentioning my age, but I've had a cell phone sinc
you had a cell phone in '88? (Score:2)
You must have had a bag phone or DynaTAC, right? It seemed like flip phones (the first handheld phones other than the DynaTAC) didn't become available until 1991.
So, it shows the time, yes?? (Score:2)
Am I unusual? (Score:4, Interesting)
After an exhaustive search, I found this [pulsarwatches.com] and so far I like it, but is it possible that it's the only decent watch that's all digital? I found a couple more (Ammon, Quiksilver and RipCurl come to mind) that were designed as surfer watches, but I really don't need to know when the tide is coming in here in Ohio. So I put this question to other time geeks out there. Are there other decent watches that are digital only? I don't like the analog/digital combo watches. Lots of wasted space that I don't care about. Just a reasonably plain, waterproof, easy to read watch that tells me the time and date at a glance, with a stainless steel case and a mineral quartz face. Am I wanting too much?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me get this straight, you want to use the modern technology when it comes to read-out, but you categorically exclude all watch
Re:Am I unusual? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It does not easily shatter like ceramics or glass.
It is more flexible than wood and some metals.
It does not chip or have wood grain which weakens the material.
It does not rust like some metals.
It is light weight.
Plastic is used on all sorts of applications, including bullet proof transparent shields where cost is the least concern.
In fact, some plastics are more expe [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Spoken like a non-engineer. Sometimes cheaper is part of better. Discounting that, many more times that you want to admit ....
Plastic is rarely a better material for any application; it's only cheaper. And for anything that may take some abuse (like something strapped to your wrist)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The biggest reason why some people shave with a straight razor is because it gives the closest shave humanly possible. Of course, there is a lot of romaticism involved with the collecting and honing and stropping, but for the most part, it's a matter of shave quality. If you've never had a proper old-fashioned straight razor
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What I find incredibly hard though is finding an analog watch that at least uses a minimum of modern technology to keep track of date, summer time and such.
Missing feature (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It is your watch that is wandering.
The entire concept of GPS requires accurate timekeeping to a scale of nanoseconds.
If your GPS receiver's clock was ACTUALLY wandering around by whole seconds, your GPS unit would be completely useless. Your position fix would be off by hundreds of thousands of miles!
Bluetooth on the wrist (Score:2)
Bluetooth gets leggs!
Everyone will know how unpopular I am! (Score:2)
Watch Sales (Score:2, Interesting)
Time will tell, I suppose. (No pun intended.)
In Soviet Russia... (Score:2)
Chris Mattern
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I use my phone as a pocket-watch (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Considering that my computer's speakers buzz every time my cellphone is about to start ringing, I'll bet you could pull that off without worrying about bluetooth or any other phone support at all!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm wearing one. It's a Casio watch which receives WWV. It sets itself every night at 2 AM. Knows the date. Adjusts for daylight savings time. Solar-powered, so it doesn't need battery replacement. So it doesn't need any attention. Lights up if you rotate your wrist rapidly. Waterproof and rugged enough to survive outdoor activities. Costs about $50.
This definitively solves the "what time is it" problem for locations in the United States. Anything beyond this is bling.
Hello Mr. Goldberg (Score:2)
Ah.....
Wouldn't it just be easier for the watch to get the time from the cell phone?
Phone gets it from the tower....
Which probably eventually gets it from NTP/WWV....
OTOH, my cheap bedside alarm clock automatically sets its data/time from the WWV broadcast.
Re: (Score:2)
They're few and far between. I'm in AU and they probably don't work here. WWV from Colorado and Hawaii can be a bit faint here.
Our local WWV equivalent (VNG) stopped broadcasting a few years ago after running out of funding (even though private individuals were able to keep it paid up for a while) and the ancient equipment became unmaintainable.
I believe the official story is that VNG has been obsoleted by GPS. Certainly GPS can give an accurate time signal but the GPS watches are very bulky and expens
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Very much *on* topic I thought!
Re: (Score:2)
So now you have a wristwatch to tell you what your cellphone is doing, which is really important because your cellphone is way down there in your pocket. I predict that the Next Big Thing will be a separate device - implanted in your skull, maybe - to alert you that your watch is trying to tell you something about what your cellphone is doing. Everyone on Slashdot will immediately se