Speaker 1: Get in Touch with Technology was tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hey, Lauren, welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren welcole Bam and the
Speaker 1: hour has come to conclude our discussion about smart watch. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we recorded an epic episode and I made so many
Speaker 1: jokes about time that I broke Lauren, And uh, that
Speaker 1: epic episode, as you know, was with into two episodes.
Speaker 1: If you don't know, go back and listen to the
Speaker 1: earlier episode where we have part one. And now we're
Speaker 1: going to really focus on the evolution of the smart watch.
Speaker 1: When we started seeing connectivity right right, Yeah, we we
Speaker 1: we We've come up through the history of how talks
Speaker 1: and watches happened a little bit and um, and now
Speaker 1: we're getting ready to talk about what we would start
Speaker 1: considering smart. Yeah, let's get to it smart. We pretty
Speaker 1: much covered like these digital watches that have interesting additional
Speaker 1: features to them. Again, I don't know that we would
Speaker 1: call any of them smart. You might argue that being
Speaker 1: able to program your watch doing some some basic programming
Speaker 1: makes it sort of a smart watch because it does
Speaker 1: go beyond the level of telling time. It could technically
Speaker 1: do whatever memory could hold and whatever you could program.
Speaker 1: To be fair, do not know how much memory that
Speaker 1: that first uh you see two thousand hadn't right, and
Speaker 1: probably not very much. But we've covered the basic kinds
Speaker 1: of watches, digital watches, the sort of stuff they could do.
Speaker 1: Once we began to figure out, hey, you know, there
Speaker 1: there are other things that transistors can do besides just
Speaker 1: have us tell time. Let's figure out these other options
Speaker 1: we might be able to give people. When we hit nine,
Speaker 1: that's when time X comes out with a watch that
Speaker 1: actually has some connectivity features in it, and they use
Speaker 1: a really weird implementation to do it. Yeah. They it
Speaker 1: had an optical sensor on to watch his face. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the data link one fifty. And it was
Speaker 1: the first watch that allowed you to transfer information from
Speaker 1: a PC to the watch. So let's say that you
Speaker 1: want to use the watch to keep track of your contacts.
Speaker 1: You're essentially using it sort of like a very primitive
Speaker 1: pa uh. And so what you do is you would
Speaker 1: go on the PC. You would use some proprietary software
Speaker 1: that came with the watch. So this is something that
Speaker 1: you would install on your computer. It's not something that's
Speaker 1: on the watch. Itself. You type out whatever it is
Speaker 1: you want to store on the watch, and then when
Speaker 1: you were ready to transfer the information, it would transmit
Speaker 1: that through a series of flashes on your monitor and
Speaker 1: you would hold you'd physically hold the watch up so
Speaker 1: that it was next to your monitor so it could
Speaker 1: catch that flashing information and that would be translated into
Speaker 1: whatever it was you had tight. So it was kind
Speaker 1: of like, you know, the old semaphore approach to communication,
Speaker 1: except in this case you're talking about it's all digital
Speaker 1: once it goes through the flashes of light. Um, it
Speaker 1: was very tiny lighthouse. Yeah, it was. It was pretty
Speaker 1: cool idea in the sense that you know, you didn't
Speaker 1: have to have any cables or anything you or technology. Now,
Speaker 1: I imagine that if there were any like I can,
Speaker 1: I can easily imagine that there were probably issues with
Speaker 1: this watch whenever you had certain lighting situations like if
Speaker 1: you're if you're if your desk or office was lit
Speaker 1: in a certain way, it might not transmit the information accurately,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. But it still was an interesting
Speaker 1: approach to fixing this. I wonder how long it took
Speaker 1: to transmit information, Like if you were to type a
Speaker 1: particularly long list. Like let's say that you were hitting
Speaker 1: the capacity for what the watch could hold. I wonder
Speaker 1: how long it would take to transmit. I honestly don't
Speaker 1: have the information, but it does make me curious if
Speaker 1: you had to hold the watch up for like a
Speaker 1: half hour while your mondor just flashes seemingly at random
Speaker 1: at you. Yeah. That also, Um, we started getting into
Speaker 1: some infrared technology in transferring data between two watches. This
Speaker 1: was the Cassio Infraceptor. It was it was a gaming
Speaker 1: watch that you could you could use this little infrared
Speaker 1: gidget to uh to play a little multiplayer games with
Speaker 1: someone else who had the same right, So you have
Speaker 1: two people And this is not unusual. We've seen lots
Speaker 1: of proprietary approaches to h to mobile gaming window does
Speaker 1: this very similar thing where you're using not necessarily infrared,
Speaker 1: you're using radio waves in that case, but in this
Speaker 1: in this case, it's it's infrared uh waves kind of
Speaker 1: like kind of like what you would have with a
Speaker 1: remote control, and uh, it wasn't that's you know, very
Speaker 1: innovative approach, especially for sure. Yeah, certainly, I'm I don't
Speaker 1: think that. In our Digital Pets episode, I don't think that, um,
Speaker 1: that those started happening until almost a decade later. It
Speaker 1: was a little bit later. Yeah, in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: IBM hit the scene with the watch pad. This was
Speaker 1: a Linux based watch. So this this watch has its
Speaker 1: own little operating system. It was a stripped down version
Speaker 1: of Linux, and it had a q v G A
Speaker 1: l c D screen. Uh. It included Bluetooth and an
Speaker 1: accelerometer in it. UM. So it had a lot of
Speaker 1: the basic features that we think of and some of
Speaker 1: the more advanced smart watches that we're starting to see
Speaker 1: hit the market today. It did have a slight disadvantage, uh,
Speaker 1: with all of this equipment. Um, it was a little
Speaker 1: power hungry and not in the Doctor Evil I'm going
Speaker 1: to Conquer the world kind of worry, but rather a
Speaker 1: battery lasted about two hours, which is when you have
Speaker 1: a time piece and you need to know what time
Speaker 1: it is, which problematic. I feel like that's about average
Speaker 1: for for maybe the p d a's of the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because well, I mean, you know, you wouldn't be normally,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be operating a p d A consistently for
Speaker 1: two hours, but of a watch, you might, you know,
Speaker 1: very well, be required to use it quite a few times.
Speaker 1: So if it only lasts a couple of hours, I
Speaker 1: guess you could tell time by how frequently you had
Speaker 1: to charge it. Uh, not terribly useful. Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's much much like the quartz mechanism. That's that's a
Speaker 1: really really accurate not not not necessarily the way you
Speaker 1: want to tell time, but but it works. Um. As
Speaker 1: of two thousand two, Cassio came out with a wrist
Speaker 1: camera that that that was that was the name of
Speaker 1: the watch. It was the wrist Camera um And and
Speaker 1: this had a fancy fancy pixels square pixels. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: how that's the resolution you could get on this thing.
Speaker 1: And it was not in colors gray scale. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you you could take very primitive photos with this risk cameras,
Speaker 1: but like a proof of concept. Sure sure, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, telling time and taking pictures. Yeah, simultaneously. It was.
Speaker 1: It was also the same year that the Fossil wrist
Speaker 1: PDA came out, and it came out in two different versions.
Speaker 1: There was one that's that supported the Palm operating system
Speaker 1: and there was one that supported pocket piece see, which
Speaker 1: was Microsoft's mobile mobile approach. Yes, It had a hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety kites of memory that could store up to
Speaker 1: around well over one more than I should say, more
Speaker 1: than one thousand contacts or around three fifty memos, depending
Speaker 1: upon what else you wanted to put in there. You know,
Speaker 1: you could have some combination thereof but that's about the
Speaker 1: the full extent of its storage capabilities. Uh. Moving up
Speaker 1: to two thousand five five was the first eat inc
Speaker 1: watch that was again by Saco now eat Inc. One
Speaker 1: of the reasons why e ink is so attractive to
Speaker 1: electronics manufacturers is that it has a very low power
Speaker 1: consumption rate. It only consumes power whenever it has to
Speaker 1: change the display. So if you have a display that's
Speaker 1: not changing frequently, then et inc ends up saving you
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of power. So let's say
Speaker 1: that you know, there's no second indicator on the watch.
Speaker 1: If it only indicated once a minute, then then it's
Speaker 1: not so bad. It can actually the battery can last
Speaker 1: a very long time. It's much more efficient than l
Speaker 1: c D display, even l E ED display. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, depending of course on how the ink is lit,
Speaker 1: because if it's got a backlight going all the time,
Speaker 1: then that that will that will drain power. So a
Speaker 1: lot of eating displays don't have any backlighting at all.
Speaker 1: They might have light that will come in from the
Speaker 1: side to eliminate the screen. If it's because you know,
Speaker 1: clearly you want to have a watch that's going to
Speaker 1: be able to work even if you are in the dark,
Speaker 1: right you can't. I need to know what time it
Speaker 1: is even when there are no lights on. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and a lot of a lot of these early early
Speaker 1: watches we should we should say also did include um,
Speaker 1: you know what, would only have the backlight turn on
Speaker 1: if you press a button to But it wasn't like
Speaker 1: it was because yes. In two thousand and six, Microsoft
Speaker 1: introduced the SPOT, which stands for Smart Personal Objects Technology UH.
Speaker 1: It was a smart watch that was meant to auto
Speaker 1: adjust to time zones by using FM radio signals. It
Speaker 1: would actually receive radio signals to determine where you were
Speaker 1: and UH and these these radio signals would have within
Speaker 1: it whatever the local time was, so it would automatically
Speaker 1: adjust to the local time zone. And it could also
Speaker 1: display information like traffic warnings or even things like messages
Speaker 1: from your outlook email. But it had a fairly small
Speaker 1: screen and the battery life was very limited, so they
Speaker 1: weren't seen as being terribly useful. By two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: Microsoft had shuttered the program, so it only lasted for
Speaker 1: about two years, but it was one of those early
Speaker 1: attempts by Microsoft to enter the smart watch space. In
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, sony Ericson introduced the mb W one fifty,
Speaker 1: which paired with other sony Ericson products, specifically sony Ericson
Speaker 1: phones um via bluetooth. It could display a single line
Speaker 1: of text. So this is a This was a watch
Speaker 1: that if you looked at it wasn't a digital watch.
Speaker 1: It actually had watch hands and it had a watch face.
Speaker 1: But there was a little blank, tiny screen that could
Speaker 1: display one line of text, and that one live text
Speaker 1: could be something like if you had an incoming phone call,
Speaker 1: it would tell you the name of the person who
Speaker 1: was calling you, or it could give you an other
Speaker 1: alerts uh. And it also could vibrate. It had a
Speaker 1: little motor inside it that would allow it to vibrate
Speaker 1: whenever you've got a call. So that way like I
Speaker 1: missed calls all the time because as the I T
Speaker 1: crowd would say, my vibrate sit it's a little weedy.
Speaker 1: So I don't tend to notice when my phone is vibrating. Um.
Speaker 1: But if I, you know, had a watch that would vibrate,
Speaker 1: then I would either think I was having a heart
Speaker 1: attack or that I was actually getting a phone call.
Speaker 1: And maybe once I realized I was getting a phone call,
Speaker 1: I would then have a heart attack because no one
Speaker 1: calls me. I'm so lonely, so um, then I think
Speaker 1: I have a note. In two thousand nine, two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: that's when Samsung came out with the S nine one
Speaker 1: ten That was a watch that was also a phone.
Speaker 1: Now it's not the only watch phone that came out
Speaker 1: that year, but it was a one point seven six
Speaker 1: inch touchscreen phone watch. It used Bluetooth, it could connect
Speaker 1: with other devices, it could get email, and it could
Speaker 1: do MP three playback at forty megabytes of internal memory.
Speaker 1: And uh, the other watch phone that came out that year,
Speaker 1: or that debut that year cut the attention of c
Speaker 1: E S the former Consumer Electronic Showcase. Now it's our show.
Speaker 1: Now it's just CE. But in two thousand nine, I
Speaker 1: attended that year and I remember seeing this in person.
Speaker 1: I was not allowed to touch it at the time.
Speaker 1: Only LG representatives were allowed to wear it. It was
Speaker 1: the l G watch phone also known as the lg
Speaker 1: G d N and uh. It was one of those
Speaker 1: darlings of the show Flour along with the Palm pre
Speaker 1: So don't get too attached to stuff at ces is
Speaker 1: the moral of this tale. It's sold in other parts
Speaker 1: of the world, in Europe and in Asia, but never
Speaker 1: came to the United States. But it was actually a
Speaker 1: phone just like the Samsung one was. They had a
Speaker 1: cellular chip inside it that would allow you to make
Speaker 1: phone calls and it would work on cellular networks, So
Speaker 1: it's not something that you would pair with another device, um,
Speaker 1: which was an interesting approach it was. You know, again,
Speaker 1: it never came to the US, so we can never
Speaker 1: really test it out. I imagine that the battery life
Speaker 1: on this was probably pretty limited to UM and I
Speaker 1: imagined also that a lot of devices go now with
Speaker 1: pairing with a smartphone as opposed to having all this
Speaker 1: technology crammed into it in order to avoid things like
Speaker 1: battery life that only last a few hours. Right sure. Also,
Speaker 1: you know, just the advancements in say Bluetooth are such
Speaker 1: that it makes it makes it a lot easier these
Speaker 1: days to you know four point now is much more
Speaker 1: energy efficient than earlier versions of Bluetooth. That is a
Speaker 1: good point. And also the the other thing that the
Speaker 1: watchphone had was voice recognition capabilities, So in this case
Speaker 1: it actually did have the capacity to take voice commands,
Speaker 1: which interesting again and just as you would expect when
Speaker 1: I saw this at CEES. What was the example everyone
Speaker 1: gave Dick Tracy? Exactly right, Dick Tracy. Everyone's like, yes, Tracy,
Speaker 1: wrist watch and uh and I'm thinking, like, how many
Speaker 1: more years are we going to have? While that's still
Speaker 1: a valu valid reference. When I think of of voice
Speaker 1: commands to a watch, I think of, um, Glitch from
Speaker 1: from that show Reboot Reboot, thank You, which which I
Speaker 1: don't think. I think you still haven't watched. But but
Speaker 1: I'm not going to insult Glitch by calling him a
Speaker 1: watch because that would be a terrible, terrible thing to do.
Speaker 1: I'll take your word for it. Moving on in that
Speaker 1: was the year that iPod sixth generation Nano came out
Speaker 1: and it became this phenomenon of watch use. It's at first,
Speaker 1: um there, you know, you could pull up a clock
Speaker 1: face on it, but it wasn't really a function that
Speaker 1: had been in pended for but a couple of third
Speaker 1: party people started putting together these, um these watch bands
Speaker 1: and cases for it. Watch band is probably the one
Speaker 1: that most people are familiar with. Sure, sure, um, you
Speaker 1: know it's it's And then and then Apple started to
Speaker 1: realize that people were using this this for this purpose
Speaker 1: and started updating the firmware with lots of lots of
Speaker 1: fun stuff to different watch faces and things like that.
Speaker 1: You know it was it was one point five inch
Speaker 1: two forty pixel multi touch display and um, you know
Speaker 1: it's it seemed really great, Like I I remember a
Speaker 1: lot of people being so excited about this right up
Speaker 1: until when they released the seventh generation Nano that was
Speaker 1: in a vertical format and basically killed it as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, strategically on purpose for potential future
Speaker 1: development of their own stay tuned. The the sixth generation
Speaker 1: Nano again, you know, depending on your definition of smart
Speaker 1: watch might not apply because it was again mostly self
Speaker 1: contained as MP three player. They could do other stuff
Speaker 1: besides till the time, but it wasn't it was you
Speaker 1: could I think that you could sink it to um, well,
Speaker 1: I mean you could think it to a computer too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could sink it. You could not update remotely like
Speaker 1: you had to have it sink. So depending upon your definition,
Speaker 1: you might not call it a smart watch. I mean,
Speaker 1: first of all, it wasn't marketed as a smart watch.
Speaker 1: It was smarketed as an MP three player. But using
Speaker 1: it as a time piece and an MP three player,
Speaker 1: uh made a lot of sense. And and in fact,
Speaker 1: the first time I saw it, that was the first
Speaker 1: thing I thought was that, gosh, you just put that
Speaker 1: on a watch band and you've got yourself a uh,
Speaker 1: you know, essentially essentially a smart watch in my mind,
Speaker 1: Like I don't. I'm not so strict as to say
Speaker 1: that it has to have uh. It has to be
Speaker 1: completely free of any other material and a refretative counts
Speaker 1: of smart watch. It has to be self reliant, because
Speaker 1: a lot of smart watches that I like pair up
Speaker 1: with another device, you know, without that pairing, they don't
Speaker 1: have the functionality that you would you know, associate with
Speaker 1: a smart watch. And and it is certainly easier yes
Speaker 1: to uh, to to pair something to a to a
Speaker 1: UM either iOS or Android system or UM you know.
Speaker 1: My Microsoft is I think thinking about it is rumored
Speaker 1: to be thinking about getting into the smart watch game
Speaker 1: as well. And of course, you know, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of other companies that are building out devices like
Speaker 1: watches that that already hook up into existing platforms, both
Speaker 1: Android and iOS. Uh, and we'll talk about a couple
Speaker 1: of them in whom that's w I MM had an
Speaker 1: Android watch that was just meant as a developer kit.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a consumer product, um and UH. You know,
Speaker 1: it was really designed to kind of get Android developers
Speaker 1: into thinking about designing app specifically for a smart watch
Speaker 1: form factor. And whom entered into a secret and exclusive
Speaker 1: partnership with a company that I don't know what the
Speaker 1: identity is because they never said, but anyway, it's still secret.
Speaker 1: The developer kits no longer are available. UH. Is also
Speaker 1: the year that Sony came out with their first smart
Speaker 1: watch design YEP and UH and Motorola came out with
Speaker 1: the Motto Active, which was part smart watch, part athletic
Speaker 1: activity tracker, so it had the accelerometer. It also had
Speaker 1: a GPS sensor in it so it could even track
Speaker 1: your location for those US who aren't so worried about that, um.
Speaker 1: But anyway, it also had Bluetooth four point. No I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna I'm like, there's a whole other podcast that
Speaker 1: we're gonna do about about privacy and and and being
Speaker 1: tracked and it doesn't belong here, but anyway, it also could.
Speaker 1: It also could connect to other types of sensors. So
Speaker 1: if you had a sensor attached to your bike, for example,
Speaker 1: that recorded how far you had traveled through Bluetooth, you
Speaker 1: could connect your auto Active with that sensor, and the
Speaker 1: Moto Active would essentially become your window for all things
Speaker 1: activity related. Um and it also had uh could play
Speaker 1: MP three's. It could act as a second screen for
Speaker 1: a phone and give you things like your you know,
Speaker 1: color I D or text messages. It could run Android apps,
Speaker 1: but uh, the functionality was somewhat limited because again Android
Speaker 1: apps were designed for smartphones and for tablets, not for
Speaker 1: watches at this point, so trying to use some of
Speaker 1: them was more trouble than what they were worth. From
Speaker 1: what I understand, I never actually had a chance to
Speaker 1: really play with one. I got to play with one
Speaker 1: briefly at a ce S, but I didn't get a
Speaker 1: chance to really dive into it. It did have eight
Speaker 1: gigabytes of flash memory gigs. Yeah, you know it wasn't
Speaker 1: that long ago we were talking about kilobytes and now
Speaker 1: we're into the gigabytes, so we could actually hold as
Speaker 1: much as uh some MP three players, so it could
Speaker 1: hold you know, a library's worth of music. Yeah, Yeaheve
Speaker 1: is also the year that um that the Pebble kickstarter happened.
Speaker 1: And this this is a point that that Jonathan as
Speaker 1: of like today has a little bit of of added
Speaker 1: bitterness towards because all right, so so so just the
Speaker 1: gig in case for some reason you did not hear
Speaker 1: about how Pebble was the smart watch that had a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollar goal earned over ten million. It's the
Speaker 1: most point two million dollars, the most successful project to
Speaker 1: date in Kickstarter history, and as of July seven, available
Speaker 1: in certain best buy stores and and that's and that's
Speaker 1: great for Pebble. Um. The problem, the problem is, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: do you want to take this or do you do not?
Speaker 1: Do not have the words? Here's the problem. In January,
Speaker 1: certain unstruggling put in a pre order for cherry red
Speaker 1: Pebble and he's very much looking forward to wearing this
Speaker 1: cherry red Pebble everywhere. Phaps on episodes of Forward thinking
Speaker 1: where the entire world could see him wearing a cherry
Speaker 1: red pebble. But Jonathan has not received his cherry red pebble,
Speaker 1: even though he dreams of it every night, and instead
Speaker 1: has learned that it will be available and Best Buy,
Speaker 1: and that he could have walked into a brick and
Speaker 1: mortar store and bought the pebble, although technically I don't
Speaker 1: think it was cherry red. I think the cherry red
Speaker 1: ones won't be available till a little bit later in July.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the point that he could have bought a
Speaker 1: black one, they will only have black ones available at
Speaker 1: best Buy for now, but it's just assume until they
Speaker 1: actually fill their pre orders, seeing seeing that they that
Speaker 1: it was coming to brick and mortar stores before I
Speaker 1: finally get my Now, let's let's be clear, I was
Speaker 1: not a Kickstarter backer, so I totally agreed with the
Speaker 1: company's decision that they wanted to fulfill all backers orders
Speaker 1: first before going into pre order. I thought that was
Speaker 1: the right decision to make. It was the thing that
Speaker 1: rewarded the people who believed in the company from the
Speaker 1: very get go. I totally understand that, and then I
Speaker 1: pre ordered. See when I pre order the pre part.
Speaker 1: It's red, You're getting a red one. Um. But but okay,
Speaker 1: this being said that I was not. I was not
Speaker 1: really convinced about the Pebble until I went again to
Speaker 1: see Yes, and there I saw the founder of the
Speaker 1: company talking about the Pebble, giving a demo of it,
Speaker 1: explaining what their project was, explaining how they came about it.
Speaker 1: I got to to take a really close look at them.
Speaker 1: I was really impressed by the company. I was impressed
Speaker 1: by the product. And that's when I went and put
Speaker 1: in a pre order. And while I'm I'm grousing right now,
Speaker 1: it's really just out of the desire to have it,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't actually have any ill will towards
Speaker 1: the company. That's mostly played up for laughs. Um so really,
Speaker 1: if anyone from Pebble was listening, I'm not actually upset.
Speaker 1: I just eager to get one because But anyway, this
Speaker 1: is something that pairs with a smartphone. It pairs with
Speaker 1: either an Android device or an iOS device right to
Speaker 1: provide kind of like like push notifications basically for for
Speaker 1: for for emails, for text messages, for phone calls, um yep.
Speaker 1: And it uses an e paper display which is a
Speaker 1: little different from eat ink. It's not, it's not exactly
Speaker 1: the same thing. Is proprietary and any paper doesn't E
Speaker 1: paper is again another uh technology that makes it look
Speaker 1: like it's you know, paper, just like eating displays do.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have a backlight unless you press the little
Speaker 1: and even I don't think it's backlead. I think it's
Speaker 1: left from the side. It might be backlead, but I'm
Speaker 1: not active unless you press a button. Uh. So that
Speaker 1: helps concerned. It does hook up through Bluetooth, and I
Speaker 1: remember them saying that this would in fact impact the
Speaker 1: battery life of your smartphone, so UM by about five
Speaker 1: so you're going to have five to percent less time
Speaker 1: available on whatever device you have paired to the pebble.
Speaker 1: It also will give you notifications, like you were saying,
Speaker 1: neat neat device, you know, one of those things that
Speaker 1: was sort of an upstart company and really captured a
Speaker 1: lot of those interests, obviously from the fact that they
Speaker 1: raised hell so much a million dollars dollars. Just recently,
Speaker 1: Eating themselves announced um a flexible at one point seven
Speaker 1: three inch touch display called the Mobius for future release.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen this. That sounds cool. And um and
Speaker 1: and and and and lots of lots of companies are
Speaker 1: rumored to be getting into this game. Um, I think
Speaker 1: now I will say before we get into the rumors,
Speaker 1: there are a couple that I want to talk about
Speaker 1: are available right now this year. Yeah, Sony just announced
Speaker 1: earlier in June. We were recording this the very beginning
Speaker 1: of July. But in in June they announced that they
Speaker 1: were coming out with the smart watch too, to arrive
Speaker 1: in September. So that's they're they're obviously their successor to
Speaker 1: their earlier smart watch. And again it's an Android powered
Speaker 1: smart watch. It also has NFC connectivity near field communication connectivity,
Speaker 1: so that that sounds like it's got some early buzz
Speaker 1: behind it, so that sounds pretty cool. Also, the Martian
Speaker 1: Watches launched the Martian Passport, the Martian Victory, and the
Speaker 1: Martian G two G smart watches. Uh they have voice
Speaker 1: controls and they can actually act as a speaker phone.
Speaker 1: They pair with a smartphone, but they can act as
Speaker 1: a speaker phone, and they allow you to use services
Speaker 1: like Sirie over the watch. Uh s Net did not
Speaker 1: give a very positive review. It was a three star
Speaker 1: review out of five, saying that there were some problems
Speaker 1: with the voice quality that both listening to a speaker
Speaker 1: phone conversation or trying to interact with Sirie there No
Speaker 1: Sirie on a good day can be a little taxing
Speaker 1: depending upon series mood. But apparently Sirie over a speaker
Speaker 1: phone gets even. It just has trouble understanding what as
Speaker 1: you want? Right right? Yeah, whenever any of these microphones
Speaker 1: don't have um sufficient alority clarity or blocking technology for
Speaker 1: all the ambient noise. Yeah, this is why I often
Speaker 1: get stairs whenever I walked down the street and I'm
Speaker 1: screaming at my wrist. Where do I hide the body? Can't?
Speaker 1: I can't imagine why that's that's on Peach Tree. I
Speaker 1: fit right in. Um, that's that's just a little joke
Speaker 1: for anyone else who who has been in Atlanta. Al Right,
Speaker 1: so in our office off of Peach Tree, it turns out.
Speaker 1: So anyway, we're talking about rumors now, so getting into
Speaker 1: the rumored smart watches that we have heard about this
Speaker 1: year but have not yet been unveiled in an official capacity. Uh.
Speaker 1: Two big companies have smart watches that are rumored to
Speaker 1: be on the horizon. Yeah. Yeah, Google as of had
Speaker 1: filed a path for a smart watch looking thing. This
Speaker 1: wasn't the first pattern for a smart watch. They have
Speaker 1: also filed for other ones that kind of had an
Speaker 1: augmented reality aspect to them. I remember seeing one that
Speaker 1: even had a little flip up screen, so you would
Speaker 1: flip like the watch face up so it's vertical on
Speaker 1: your wrist and then you would gaze through it monocle
Speaker 1: style at the world around you to get augmented reality data.
Speaker 1: But it looks like this since Google Glass is coming out,
Speaker 1: maybe yeah, yeah, well well this, uh, this, this new
Speaker 1: patent has um Google glasses, uh touch pads on the
Speaker 1: sides of the screen. Yeah. In fact, I've seen some
Speaker 1: speculation that this watch would actually interact with Google Glass,
Speaker 1: so that you would become another means of controlling Google,
Speaker 1: so that maybe you're not shouting at yourself, right and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be saying Google instead of Google. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been along day, folks. Uh yeah, So that's that's
Speaker 1: one possibility. And then there's the other big company. Apple
Speaker 1: has already um filed a patent in Japan, I registered
Speaker 1: a trademark, right, Yeah, they haven't as far as I know.
Speaker 1: I mean, there may be patents out there. There probably
Speaker 1: are patents out there, but it's been registering the trademark
Speaker 1: I watch. Not a big surprise, but trademarking the the
Speaker 1: word I watch in various countries, most recently in Japan,
Speaker 1: but in other countries as well, which again suggests that
Speaker 1: the company is looking into developing its own smart watch.
Speaker 1: This is something that's been rumored for a while. Keep
Speaker 1: in mind, the iPad was rumored to be a big,
Speaker 1: big project for about two or three years before it
Speaker 1: finally came out, So that might mean that it may
Speaker 1: be another three years before we see an eye watch.
Speaker 1: Maybe not, maybe it'll be much you know. Like like
Speaker 1: I said about about that that I Pod Nana, the
Speaker 1: six gen I, I really do think that they started
Speaker 1: counting down from M and saying, you know, we need
Speaker 1: to stop making them this way because otherwise to them
Speaker 1: later on in up cannibalizing our our smart watch market
Speaker 1: if we keep selling something that's uh slightly less capable
Speaker 1: and perhaps less expensive electronic device. Yeah, that one, um,
Speaker 1: I've I've I've heard I've heard rumors. I've read rumors
Speaker 1: that added Samsung is thinking about it a Galaxy smart
Speaker 1: watch to go along with their their Galaxy Note and
Speaker 1: Galaxy smartphone lines. So yeah, I mean we're just getting
Speaker 1: into it now, and I think really it's the wearable
Speaker 1: computer aspect that's that's getting to a level of sophistication.
Speaker 1: And the innovation around how you you use the user
Speaker 1: interface has really helped it a lot, because touch touch
Speaker 1: screens are so important for this, because even voice controls
Speaker 1: and and maybe we'll get to just your controls. Like
Speaker 1: I can imagine having a watch that has uh the
Speaker 1: kind of accelerometers in it so that it only displays
Speaker 1: the time when you hold your arm up as if
Speaker 1: you're looking at the watch, because then it could end up, say,
Speaker 1: being a lot of energy whenever you're not doing that. Although,
Speaker 1: to be fair, depending upon how some of us look
Speaker 1: at our watches, that might just be frustrating because we
Speaker 1: might be like I could totally see what time it
Speaker 1: was right now if my watch were lit up, but
Speaker 1: that would be that that would be pretty cool if
Speaker 1: you could, if you could direct your your watch by
Speaker 1: making increasingly ridiculous gestures. I would be glad to give
Speaker 1: someone a broken watch and tell them that's how it worked,
Speaker 1: just to see, like what kind of crazy muppet moves.
Speaker 1: We would get out of that note to self. Something
Speaker 1: to do with Josh. We we do, by the way,
Speaker 1: we we we got it. We got a reader letter
Speaker 1: in and and I I want to say real quick
Speaker 1: that that we love all of our fellow podcasts. We
Speaker 1: honestly have zero animosity towards any of them. We like
Speaker 1: giving everyone grief on air, but because they're so agreevable
Speaker 1: and trust us, trust us. If you were to to
Speaker 1: see the interactions that happened within our office, you would
Speaker 1: realize this is all that kind of you know, one
Speaker 1: upsmanship that's come completely meant ingest. But none of us
Speaker 1: really intend any others uh any ill will except for
Speaker 1: me against Josh. But apart from that, he's I'm still
Speaker 1: kidding mostly Pebble, send me my watch. Um, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's just because I'm hurt. That's all all right? Well,
Speaker 1: I think that kind of wraps up this discussion. Lauren.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this. You don't do you normally
Speaker 1: wear a watch? I do not, Okay, I also do
Speaker 1: not normally wear a watch. Is there is there a
Speaker 1: smart watch out there, a design you've seen that you've
Speaker 1: actually liked or do you just not? Is that just
Speaker 1: not something for you. I've been I've been thinking about
Speaker 1: getting a watch actually because I they look cool. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: that's the same thing. I've been thinking, like, I've got
Speaker 1: a phone that tells me what time it is, and
Speaker 1: I've always got my phone on it, right, But at
Speaker 1: the same time, I think I kind of want a
Speaker 1: fashion accessory. And that's really what how watches started off.
Speaker 1: When you think about it, I think for me it
Speaker 1: would take, um, it would take one of these devices
Speaker 1: being it's exty enough, it's it's having that fashionable appeal
Speaker 1: of and and and some of the fitness trackers are
Speaker 1: starting to get really really cool looking. Um, and I
Speaker 1: think it would take a device, um, you know, look
Speaker 1: looking like like like the Misfit Shine for example. You know,
Speaker 1: like like just something very sleep So you want you're
Speaker 1: you want the aesthetic to be just right. Like for me,
Speaker 1: a little bit kind of clunky and geeky works for
Speaker 1: me because let's face it, I'm clunky and geeky, So
Speaker 1: I think it works well. But I've actually got three
Speaker 1: different smart watches pre ordered and I haven't received any
Speaker 1: of them yet. Actually technically one is not a smart watch.
Speaker 1: One of them is just a super cool watch design,
Speaker 1: which I'll show you after the episodes over. But it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's not a smart watch because it really just tells
Speaker 1: the time. It doesn't have any other extra functionality to
Speaker 1: it anyway. Uh Yeah, I see this as being a
Speaker 1: market that's just going to continue to get more and
Speaker 1: more competitive, especially when we start to see ing uh
Speaker 1: flexible screens, you know, more like eat ink displays that
Speaker 1: are flexible that kind of stuff. Um, or we see
Speaker 1: uh flexible oh led displays come down in price, and
Speaker 1: that's gonna be a while obviously, But once we start
Speaker 1: seeing that, then you're gonna see the form factor for
Speaker 1: watches just go crazy because it can be molded to
Speaker 1: any shape at that point. And while we are used
Speaker 1: to watch as looking a certain way, there's no guarantee
Speaker 1: that that's how they're going to look ten years from that.
Speaker 1: And if they get more comfortable and more a wearable,
Speaker 1: then that's obviously. I can't wait for them to look
Speaker 1: like like arm bracers. You know, it's over your whole
Speaker 1: forearm and can give you a full read out of everything.
Speaker 1: And dude, I would buy one in heartbeat. I'm not
Speaker 1: even joking. I would buy those all right, Well, that
Speaker 1: wraps up this episode of tech Stuff. Guys. If you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future topics, let us know. You
Speaker 1: can write us our email addresses tech stuff at Discovery
Speaker 1: dot com or drops Lan on social are handle at
Speaker 1: both Facebook and the Twitter is tech stuff, H. S
Speaker 1: W and Lauren and I will talk to you again. Relation,
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