Smartwatch DOA ?

Wow its going to be a crazy few months for a market which lets face it is untapped and unknown - Pretty much all the big hitters are heading into the Smartwatch space with Motorola throwing their hat into the ring with a new patent. Clearly suggesting Moto are about to enter the market is a good thing as Google are going to be releasing Google Glass and a new watch we expect, maybe two different flavors of the same experience will be available from the same company pretty much. 

The patent filed was for eye gesture control kinda thing. Something the MOTOACTV didn't have. Maybe it should have as it was a bit of a bind using it while working out, the other thing the MOTOACTV suffered from was a bit of a messy menu system. Something Moto to work on there for sure. 

Motorola would do well to stick to what it knows as they already have a smartwatch platform with sync and the motoactv website too.

So - this smartwatch market space, are we all gagging to get on board and forget the world of Rolex, TAG, Tissot etc. We love the technology, but having to sync my watch or have to remember to use it over the other watches I have invested heavily into is going to be a struggle in a change of mindset.

Something to consider. When I turn my phone on silent or I want to ignore it, I don't want to be reminded of that fact with my watch bleeping at me or vibrating on my wrist, and my phone blinking in my pocket. 

The idea of having an all in one like the Omate Truesmart is fantastic, we covered the item (and backed it on Kickstarter too, read here) but we can't really see beyond the sports usage or indeed cheating in exams. Outside of that I like to keep my phone in my pocket. The MOTOACTV had various weather, facebook and twitter plug ins - it could receive calls and texts, you couldn't dial out though, the MP3 player was ok. Its the social networks blinking at me when I was working out that drove me nuts and in the end turned them off and uninstalled them from my phone and watch. Will email and any other kind of notification going to be a drag with two devices on your person telling you stuff. This is where I think the whole idea of an all day smartwatch falls on its ass. Not to mention having to charge the thing when away from home for more than 2 days.

Samsung, Apple and incoming and Sony are updating their Smartwatch 1 with the smartly named Smartwatch 2. Nobody has convinced us, Omate aside,  that smartwatch wearing will be any good or have uses outside of sport. 

Google Glass on the other hand is very interesting.