Showing posts with label Smartwatches. Show all posts
The Apple Watch - as it's officially known - has been unveiled.
After months of hints and mystery, Apple has finally taken the plunge
and joined the battle for your wrist with its own smartwatch.
As you’d expect with a brand spanking new bit of Apple tech, the
Apple Watch has polarised opinion. Some have hailed it as the new Best
Thing Ever, some have decried it as Just Another Smartwatch.
You can find all the specs, details and dimensions here; but what's
it like in person? We tried one on in Cupertino; read on to see what we
made of it.
Design and build
Build quality is what you’d expect from Apple: light (very light) but strong, and slim, too.
The Apple Watch is not nearly as slim as the iPhone 6, and it’s flat,
so in form factor it’s not radically different from the other
smartwatches on the market. But Apple has been careful to keep it from
looking bulky, and even the larger version didn’t look out of place on a
dainty female wrist.
The dial – sorry, Digital Crown – looks less obtrusive in real life
than it does in Apple’s promo shots. It’s smaller than the dials on most
men’s watches, but it’s also very easy to access.
We’re going to use the phrase ‘knob feel’ here, so brace yourself:
the Apple Watch’s knob feel is light, with very little resistance and no
click. It’s a great piece of design, allowing you to move things on
screen without covering them with your clumsy great prod fingers.
Screen
The screen is bright and crisp, and looked at from the kind of
glancing angles you’d expect to look at a watch screen from – edge-on
while riding a bike or balancing in a crowded train – words and pictures
remained nicely readable.
While some of the watch faces look
fantastic, this watch will never be able to ape posh fashion watches in
the same way as the Moto 360. Well, not circular posh fashion watches,
anyway.
Taptic feedback
The demo unit we tried on was running a loop of app demos, a
couple of which (including the heartbeat-sharing app) used the ‘taptic
engine’, as Apple calls it, or buzzer, as we’re going to call it.We’re
not exactly Haptic Feedback Review Monthly, but there is a difference
between nuanced haptics and a flat buzz – Valve’s Steam Controller, for
example, uses it to fool your hands into thinking you’re holding
something with a different shape – and we think it’s an area that will
become increasingly important as wearable tech becomes more popular.
The haptics in the Apple Watch have that sort of nuanced feel, with the heartbeat delivered as a softly detailed pulse.Is the Apple Watch a revolutionary piece of hardware? Yes and
no. No, because it’s not a completely different kind of smartwatch, but
as with all things Apple, the hardware – even if it’s nicer than anyone
else’s – is only half the story.
As with the iPhone, the Apple Watch has a hulking great advantage in
the apps department, something that was obvious from its unveling: where
Google tends to talk about the amazing potential of Android Wear, Apple
talks about big brands that are already signed up and making apps for
its platform – apps to find your car, let you into your hotel room,
control your smart heating or track and share your exercise, not to
mention shopping with Apple Pay.
For that reason, the Apple Watch may be the device that brings the
smartwatch to the masses and gets the wearable revolution revolving.
When can you strap in?
Apple's
being cagey about when, exactly, you'll be able to slip an Apple Watch
onto your wrist; it says only that the Watch will be available in early
2015. Prices will start at US$350 (Rs. 21,000), and it'll be available in
three different variants: Apple Watch, Apple Watch Sport and Apple Watch
Edition.
It's kicked up a storm on Kickstarter, but does the Pebble make a splash or sink like a stone?
For all anyone knows, Apple might never release a
wrist-mounted phone accessory. But if you must stay one step ahead of
something that still doesn't officially exist, the Pebble is your only
choice. This crowd-funded, open source designer smart watch blew up
Kickstarter, with nearly 70,000 backers handing its creators over $10m
to bring timepieces into the 21st century. Nearly a year later, the
first Pebbles are rolling off the production lines. So is Pebble the
first must-have smart watch, or just another geeky gadget that promises
Dick Tracy and fails to deliver?
Minimal design
Black,
white and primary colours, distinctive eco-efficient packaging and
slim, minimalist design – the Pebble doesn't so much nod to Apple as bow
down in homage. Jony Ive might not approve of the chunky buttons or
slightly clumsy curved case but neither does this look like something
cobbled together by three 20-somethings – as it was. The strap is plain,
comfortable rubber (it's removable), the waterproof body is light and
elegantly proportioned, and even the 10mm depth doesn't feel too thick.
E-paper screen
E-paper
displays rock. The Pebble's is nothing short of awesome. Like the
Kindle's screen, this is incredibly crisp and clear, especially in
bright sunlight. The modest 24,000 pixels are plenty for displaying
digits, watchfaces and text. An accelerometer automatically flashes on a
backlight as you shake your wrist, which is great for hands-free
time-checking but can also be occasionally distracting when you're just
moving your arms about in the dark.
Custom clocks
The
left button brings up a menu of three built-in watchfaces (you can
currently download two more from your smartphone app). The 'Text' face
is certainly the coolest, spelling out the time in words that smoothly
slink in from one side, but if you don't like the others, a little
patience is all that’s required. Pebble's OS is open source and dozens
of apps and watchfaces are just around the corner.
Smartphone smarts
The
whole point of a smart watch is to leverage your smartphone. The Pebble
connects to iOS and Android devices via a simple, easy to use app. Pair
it via Bluetooth, follow a few simple instructions and you start
getting all kinds of notifications – incoming calls, text messages,
email, calendar and stopwatch alerts, plus social messaging – will pop
up on the screen with a gentle vibration. This is both incredibly cool
and extremely useful, especially when you've got your hands full or it's
socially awkward to drag your phone from your pocket. You can also
control your phone's music – except if it's playing on another Bluetooth
device. But this is only the tip of the iceberg – apps are coming that
will synch with running and cycling apps to provide performance data,
connect to GPS to navigate golf courses, and in due course much, much
more.
Power and problems
Of
course, the first genuinely smart watch is far from perfect. There are
interface hiccups that annoy – such as a back button that doesn't take
you all the way back to the watch face, and a very occasional Bluetooth
lapse that meant we were at one point left unconnected from our phone
for a few hours without realising it. These should be easily fixed in
firmware updates. More worrying was a battery life that was less than
three days, instead of the promised week, with the watch displaying a
low battery icon then shutting down seconds later. Oh, and as an aside,
the magnetic USB power cable feels like pure Apple.
Verdict
It's
easy to see what the Pebble is missing – the ability to reply to
messages, voice recognition, better battery life. But that's only
because it already delivers so much. Not just the first essential smart
watch for smartphones, the Pebble is a classic timepiece in its own
right.
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